November 2014
How Municipalities Responded
Hidehiko Fukunaga / Sayaka Irie / Masaru Yamaguchi
In July 2014, in response to the approaching Typhoon Neoguri, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) announced a typhoon emergency warning for 36 municipalities in Okinawa, which were the very first typhoon emergency warning issued in Japan. The typhoon “emergency warning” is the highest level of alert which is issued when a powerful typhoon, with a level of intensity observed only once every few decades, is predicted. In this article, we investigate how the emergency warnings affected the municipalities’ decision-making on the issuing of evacuation advisories as well as the withdrawal of them in order to discuss challenges faced with information delivery. To do so, we reviewed the actions taken by JMA and broadcasters in chronological order and conducted questionnaire surveys of the 36 municipalities in addition to case studies on several local governments.
Key research findings include:
-No less than 40% of the municipalities started discussing whether to issue evacuation advisories when they received the preliminary announcement of JMA emergency warnings.
-The announcement of the emergency warnings served as the strongest factor for the local governments’ issuing of evacuation advisories.
-Municipalities that issued the typhoon evacuation advisories for the first time in their history, accounted for 85%, of which 30% say they would not have issued the advisories if they had not received the JMA emergency warnings. It is highly possible that the emergency warnings encouraged the local authorities to issue evacuation advisories.
-JMA’s withdrawal of the emergency warnings was the strongest factor for local governments’ removal of their evacuation advisories. Many of the local governments withdrew evacuation advisories despite the fact that heavy rain warnings and/or sediment disaster alerts were still in effect. This tells us it will be necessary to take measures to ensure that ordinary warnings and alerts will not be neglected.
-It is difficult to say that local governments and residents fully understand the mechanism of emergency warnings. Information that alerts people to danger should be announced in an easy-to-understand manner. Further improvement of the system is needed.