Background
Resilience is generally as a system’s ability “absorb impacts and cope with an event,” in a way that maintains community function (Cutter et. al. 2008, p. 599). In the end, the community would be better prepared for future events due to the social learning process that would take place after a disaster (Adger 2000, Adger et. al. 2005, Cutter et. al. 2008). The hazards that are prone to coastal environments can turn into disaster events through the “erosion of resilience” (Adger et. al. 2005). The components of what make a community resilient can be a variety of connections to different elements including vulnerability, mobility, education, economic stability, location, social networks, political decision-making, local ecological systems, and more (Adger 2000, Adger 2006, Adger et. al. 2005, Cutter et. al. 2008).
For nuclear disaster, a community’s ability to adapt is altered by a number of factors. These can include uncertainty of radiation effects, longevity of impact due to long half-lives of radioactive materials, and even scale of decision-making (Sugimoto et. al. 2012, Yamashita and Takamura 2015, Coleman et. al. 2013). There is also little precedent for social learning involved in nuclear disaster as Chernobyl is still the only other level 7 nuclear disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale (Yamashita and Takamura 2015).
Tsunami resilience, while also dependant on the many factors previously stated, has a collection of tsunami-specific implications that are not limited to, but can include how “environmental degradation such as land clearing, coastal erosion, overfishing, and coral mining” reduce economic resilience (Adger et. al. 2005). Conversely, the time frame of the event could result in better outcomes psychologically for survivors and their future (Brumfiel 2013).
Framing
To what extent is community resilience to nuclear disasters similar to or different from other types of disasters?
Situated Context
Due to Japan’s location and tendency for large scale earthquakes, the country has developed a strong earthquake culture. Disaster culture is one of the ways that communities can pass along social learning after events, which Japan has been able to manifest through infrastructure, risk association, political decision-making, and more.
In March of 2011, a massive 9.1 magnitude earthquake hit just off the east coast of mainland Japan, causing first extensive tsunami inundation and later a massive nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Zhang et. al. 2014). The event is often referred to as the 2011 Tohoku triple disaster, an uncommon combination of three disasters at once, effectively overwhelming post-disaster efforts to function
While nuclear disaster is relatively new to the country, the other experience being the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Japan does have a history of the earthquake-tsunami duo (Suppasri et. al. 2013). That being said, all three components of the disasters were far from expected, as no one expected the magnitude, size of tsunami, or nuclear meltdown possibilities (Suppasri et. al. 2013). Because of this surprise, resilience to all three events were put to the test and provide an interesting comparison within similar contexts.
Focus
How is the resilience of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami survivors different from the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown survivors?
Methods
The resilience that I will look at will focus on individual (psychological), community (mobility and social-cohesion), ecological (radioactivity, land), and economic (industry).
Individual – analysis of first person accounts found in books retelling the events, and articles such as Brumfiel (2013) and Sugimoto et. al. (2012).
Community – evacuation and resettlement data including GPS tracking study by Hayano and Adachi (2013), and movement data from sources such as Zhang et. al. (2014) and Brumfiel (2013). Paired with mapping showing evacuated zones, radiation spread, and evacuation checkpoints. Should include resettlement concerns such as rebuilding from tsunamis or radioactivity for nuclear meltdown.
Ecological – for nuclear power, review of what ecological testing has been done in the area to determine what is safe or not, especially that of food. Sources such as Yamashita and Takamura (2015) can provide context and possible data sources. For tsunami impacts on coastal environments, sources such as Suppasri et. al. (2013) can provide information such as the spread of inundation zones and environment destruction.
Economic – using local, national, and international news to determine key industries in the area before both the tsunami and meltdown. Analyse and compare with current news regarding same businesses. A key point of interest would include size, location, and resources uses by the company and/or industry. Key points for this methodology would be on how the different resources use in the area is damaged by events.
References
Adger, W. Neil. 2000. “Social and Ecological Resilience: Are They Related?” Progress in Human Geography 24 (3): 347–64.
Adger, W. Neil. 2006. “Vulnerability.” Global Environmental Change 16: 268–81.
Adger, W. Neil, Terry P. Hughes, Carl Folke, Stephen R. Carpenter, and Johan Rockström. 2005. “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters.” Science 309 (5737): 1036–39.
Brumfiel, Geoff. 2013. “Fallout Of Fear.” Nature 493: 290–93.
Coleman, C. Norman, Daniel J. Blumenthal, Charles A. Casto, Michael Alfant, Steven L. Simon, Alan L. Remick, Heather J. Gepford, et al. 2013. “Recovery and Resilience After a Nuclear Power Plant Disaster: A Medical Decision Model for Managing an Effective, Timely, and Balanced Response.” Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 7 (2): 136–45.
Cutter, Susan L., Lindsey Barnes, Melissa Berry, Christopher Burton, Elijah Evans, Eric Tate, and Jennifer Webb. 2008. “A Place-Based Model for Understanding Community Resilience to Natural Disasters.” Global Environmental Change 18: 598–606.
Hayano, Ryugo S., and Ryutaro Adachi. 2013. “Estimation of the Total Population Moving into and out of the 20 Km Evacuation Zone during the Fukushima NPP Accident as Calculated Using ‘Auto-GPS’ Mobile Phone Data.” Proceedings of the Japan Academy. Series B, Physical and Biological Sciences 89 (5): 196–99.
Sugimoto, A., S. Krull, S. Nomura, T. Morita, and M. Tsubokura. 2012. “The Voice of the Most Vulnerable: Lessons from the Nuclear Crisis in Fukushima, Japan.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 90 (8): 629–30.
Suppasri, Anawat, Nobuo Shuto, Fumihiko Imamura, Shunichi Koshimura, Erick Mas, and Ahmet Cevdet Yalciner. 2013. “Lessons Learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami: Performance of Tsunami Countermeasures, Coastal Buildings, and Tsunami Evacuation in Japan.” Pure and Applied Geophysics 170, 993-1018.
Yamashita, Shunichi, and Noboru Takamura. 2015. “Post-Crisis Efforts towards Recovery and Resilience after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident.” Japanese Journal of Clinical Oncology 45 (8): 700–707.
Zhang, Hui, Wanglin Yan, Akihiro Oba, and Wei Zhang. 2014. “Radiation-Driven Migration: The Case of Minamisoma City, Fukushima, Japan, after the Fukushima Nuclear Accident.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 11 (9): 9286–9305.