Recent disasters in Japan have highlighted the value of shopping malls as community evacuation sites. Against this backdrop, major distribution enterprise Aeon Co. has been working on mall designs that incorporate resistance to disasters.
Aeon Mall Iwaki-Onahama, which opened in June 2018 in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, adopted for the first time an architectural style known as a "pilotis structure," where the building's first floor is constructed entirely with support pillars.
Standing just 100 meters away from the coast, the building design heeds the lessons of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. To enable the building to continue to function even in the event of a tsunami as high as 6.3 meters, equipment such as generators and transformers has been installed on the second floor or higher.
If an earthquake measuring lower 5 or larger on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 occurs, the mall entrance will automatically unlock -- even in the middle of the night -- so that local residents can evacuate to the rooftop.
The mall's disaster prevention design was proven useful in October last year. Typhoon No. 19 caused heavy rain that broke the embankment of the Natsui River, which flows through the central part of Iwaki. Flooding reached the water purification facility, leading to a water distribution failure over a wide area.
To assist local residents, it was decided that they could use the drinking water stored in the mall's storage tank. Every day, cars lined up at the water station, and many people left messages of gratitude on the mall's bulletin board.
"We want to be a place that can be relied on by the local community in an emergency, " said Keito Yahata, 39, the general manager of Aeon Mall Iwaki-Onahama.
Being quick to assess the state of affairs during a disaster helps people protect themselves. Information technology giant Yahoo Japan Corp. is putting effort into spreading information using the smartphone app "Yahoo! Japan disaster prevention flash report."
When you register your home and other locations on the app, public information for each area will be sent to you -- emergency earthquake flashes, forecasts for heavy rain, evacuation sites and so on.
Just before Typhoon No. 19 made landfall, Yahoo trialed a function that allowed app users to post real-time updates about the disaster. The aim is to reduce damage by improving the effectiveness of available information with on-scene user reports such as "being flooded" or "the evacuation site is full of people."
Shinji Tanaka, 44, who was involved in the development of the app and is also a qualified weather forecaster, said, "We were concerned about people posting information as a prank, but we discovered that you could gain useful information."
Yahoo is planning to fully implement the app in spring this year.
All of the above comes to nothing, however, if there is no signal for your smartphone to receive during a disaster. During Typhoon No. 15 in September last year, Chiba Prefecture experienced a long-term power failure. People over a large area lost their phone signals when backup power at the base station was exhausted.
Mobile base station vehicles play an active role in places where a disaster has occurred. However, if the roads are damaged, vehicles cannot enter the area. In response to this, telecommunications companies are working on flying mobile base stations.
In autumn last year, KDDI Corp. in collaboration with Fujitsu Ltd. and the city of Uonuma, Niigata Prefecture, succeeded in a feasibility test to install a small base station on a helicopter. The key was having access to equipment that would transmit radio waves normally, even with the helicopter's vibrations.
"We'd like to perfect the technology so that [a flying mobile base station] can be used with helicopters in each prefecture," said Yoshinori Kitatsuji, 48, of KDDI Research, Inc., who was involved in the project.
The industry is also studying how to mount a base station on an unmanned flying vehicle.
A serious concern for disaster prevention planners is the possibility of large-scale damage in the event of a major earthquake in the Nankai Trough.
More than 70 years have passed since the 1946 Nankai earthquake, the most recent earthquake of that kind. Experts have predicted there is a 70% to 80% chance of an earthquake of magnitude 8 to 9 occurring within the next 30 years.
The government estimates that the number of dead or missing people due to building collapses or a tsunami among other reasons will reach up to 231,000. The impact of decreased production and services due to human suffering and the disruption of distribution networks is estimated to reach 36.2 trillion yen.
To minimize the damage, the government has called on companies to formulate and regularly review their business continuity plans, which would enable the resumption of business and services as soon as possible, and to take measures such as establishing multilayered distribution networks and strengthening earthquake resistance of their facilities.
Eastern Japan suffered repeated typhoon damage in 2019. September's Typhoon No. 15 caused a large-scale power failure in Chiba Prefecture. More than 90 people died during Typhoon No. 19 in October due to events such as landslides. Rivers flooded all over Japan with Typhoon No. 21, which brought record heavy rainfall.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
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