Citation

Miyazaki T, Ohtani R, Ohno T, Takasugi T, Yamada T. Disasters 2019; 43(1): 181-205.

Affiliation

The President of the OYO RMS Corporation, Japan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/disa.12294

PMID

29968919

Abstract

This paper evaluates the mitigation effect of Tokai earthquake measures on housing damage using a counterfactual approach. It focuses on those measures that stimulate ex-ante investment in disaster prevention in the supposedly affected area, including earthquake-proof retrofitting and improved housing construction; the effect of the measures on housing losses is estimated monetarily. The study compares factual disaster damage computed using a real distribution of houses with counterfactual damage to a hypothetical housing distribution that would occur if the measures were not implemented. The key findings are: (i) the disaster mitigation effects of Tokai earthquake measures on housing amount to approximately JPY 18 billion (USD 0.18 billion) for Yamanashi Prefecture and JPY 0.26 trillion (USD 2.6 billion) for Shizuoka Prefecture, which would be at the centre of the event; (ii) a before-after comparison biases estimates of the mitigation effect; and (iii) statistically, the measures do not mitigate the housing damage predicted for an earthquake in Tokai.

© 2018 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2018.

Language: en

Keywords

Tokai earthquake; before-after comparison; counterfactual approach; earthquake disaster damage