How can a bilateral military cooperation in disaster risk reduction [310114]

How can a bilateral military cooperation in disaster risk reduction

shift from a responsive to a preventive approach:

The case of Operation Tomodachi

Vlad Grigore (Student: [anonimizat]: i6182558)

Supervisor: Dr. Valerie Graw

Abstract

Military structures are key actors heavily involved in first response HA/DR operations. [anonimizat], grip the contemporary paradigm shift from a responsive to a preventive approach to disaster risk. This study promotes such a [anonimizat] 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Acutely stressful situations and cultural discrepancies exacerbate the from the use of representativeness and availability heuristics. Thus, [anonimizat] U.S.-Japan cooperation under Operation Tomodachi. [anonimizat], [anonimizat] a more integrated and holistic approach to disaster risk.

Keywords: vulnerability, [anonimizat], Japan, [anonimizat], [anonimizat] (GIS)

Table of figures

Figure 1:’Innovation curve’ – paradigm shift from a responsive to a preventive approach 9

Figure 2: The IPCC AR5 conceptual framework for understanding risk 19

Figure 3: [anonimizat] 21

Figure 4: [anonimizat] 22

Figure 5: Tectonic plates of Japan (source: Earth Observatory of Singapore 28

Figure 6: Information sharing channels from JMA 30

Figure 7: Chronology of Operation Tomodachi 34

Figure 8: Map of the nuclear power plants in Japan 40

Figure 9: Map of 2011 Tohoku tsunami height 41

Figure 10: Rural and urban population distribution in Japan 43

Figure 11: Map showing low and high income rural communities in coastal Japan 44

Figure 12: Land cover map for measuring coastal area exposure 46

Figure 13: Map of property price change in 2012 relative to 2011 49

Figure 14: Schematic representation of core concepts characteristic for the Japanese mindset 53

Table of tables

Table 1: Definition of key concepts as presented in the IPCC framework 17

Table 2: Characteristics of system 1 and system 2 23

Table 3: WorldRiskIndex Overview 29

Table 4: 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami impact on human lives and economic assets 31

Table 5: US and Japan corresponding military branches and their primary roles 32

Table 6: Primary data used for GIS analysis 36

Table 7: [anonimizat] 46

Table 8: List of a series of heuristics and the resulting biases and effects during Operation Tomodachi 55

Introduction

Foreword

March 11, 2011 [anonimizat]. The 9.1 magnitude earthquake (NGDC/WDS, n.d.-a) and the subsequent tsunami took 19,846 lives (EM-DAT, n.d.) and produced one of the most severe nuclear disasters after the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. [anonimizat] a greater calamity, demonstrating impressive resilience and coping capacity in dire situations.

Immediately after the shockwave hit the eastern coast of the island of Honshu, Operation Tomodachi kicked off in what we consider a breakthrough disaster relief mission between the Japanese and the U.S. military forces, considering the limited common experience in disaster relief operations prior to the disaster. The unprecedented deployment of troops and military equipment that made the U.S. vice president Joe Biden refer to Operation Tomodachi as “the single largest humanitarian relief effort in American history” (2011); the operation has also been praised as “a model for American disaster relief efforts” (Wilson, 2012).

Problem statement

The prompt intervention under acute pressure and limited time was, indeed, an example for the world to follow. However, once the situation was stabilised and the society began to operate under business-as-usual circumstances, numerous reports started to bring to surface many mishaps and inconsistencies during the joint military operations. Among the main issues repeatedly signalled were the poor information-sharing channels, the defective communication which was the cause of the Japanese lack of understanding of the U.S. capabilities from one side and the U.S. lack of understanding of the Japanese concept of operations, and the topic that attracted more media attention of the poor management and orientation in the radioactive environment in the premises of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Essentially, apart from the logistical unpreparedness that impaired the information exchange – if we talk about secure communication channels – and the timely intervention in many areas – if we talk about the lack of amphibious capabilities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (MCA&F, 2014) – the obvious major issue in the Japan-U.S. bilateral cooperation was a misjudgement of the cultural background and, implicitly, the way of relating with each other in an extraordinary situation. From the American part, assisting a developed nation in such a complicated scenario was exceptional; in most of the cases, the U.S. offers humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HA/DR) services to partners from developing nations, where the partner also relies heavily on the American know-how and are also dependent logistically. This, however, was not the case for Japan, a global leading authority in technological research and development, with strong and optimised institutions that usually, similarly to the U.S., provide the know-how for other external partners in need. Thus, the U.S. could not use an expeditive and efficient top-down approach, all the more considering the decades-long strategic partnership between the two countries. On the Japanese side too, the top-down approach could not work, as Japan has always been dependent on the U.S. form a military perspective after the WWII demilitarisation. Thus, combined with the very specific elusive and conflict-avoiding Japanese spirit, they might have been expecting the U.S. Army to be more in control, albeit not explicitly.

In his post-disaster report, Major Wilson states that “the lessons and processes developed during this historic period must be leveraged by not only the U.S. and GoJ but by the international community collectively to better posture response operations in the future” (2011, p.17). Major Wilson hints by this to a preventive rather than responsive approach and this is also the purpose of our research: to inform decision-makers on how such an approach can be achieved, based on what was overlooked during Operation Tomodachi.

Research question and study relevance

Starting from the specific case study of Operation Tomodachi, the present research analyses the cognitive biases arising among the coordination processes between the two partner nations’ officials and also among the Japanese civil society confronted with the acutely stressful events. We argue in the literature review that behavioural insights promote a stronger focus on the vulnerability coordinate of risk. The study investigates in which instances the use of heuristics produced a positive outcome and those in which the decision making processes were sluggish and prevented a more efficient intervention that, consequently, could have saved lives or assets. In this direction, we also use GIS mapping techniques to reveal the parts of the population at risk of being adversely impacted by a similar disaster. Roger Kasperson (1992) argues that the division between the 'technical' and 'social’ lenses of risk analysis are a primary generator of differences in opinions in the field of risk research. Seeking to resolve this opposition in perspectives and given our research topic, we propose the following research question and methods to promote a better development of preventive approaches within highly hierarchical structures such as the military. In our impartial analysis we distance ourselves from adopting the point of view of either side, presenting the fact in a manner as objective as possible.

Thus, our main question is How can a bilateral military cooperation shift from a responsive to a preventive approach? and by answering it we aim to provide concrete steps that can be taken based on the lessons learned from Operation Tomodachi, steps which can further be extrapolated and tailored to other cultural and geographic contexts. As a more focused sub-question, that refers to identifying drivers of vulnerability for the population living in the coastal areas of Japan which are prone to frequent flooding by tsunami is What are the key factors that prompt the Japanese population to settle in tsunami prone areas? To answer this question we are using geospatial analysis techniques to map communities and assets situated in high-risk regions. In this way, we are seeking to identify certain patterns of behaviour and social organisation that represent these communities. Next, linking our general problem statement to methods that are innovative in our context, we are also considering the second sub-question of How can stress and cultural context exacerbate the use of heuristics in a complex crisis? This question reveals the lenses through which we conduct the present research, namely the field of behavioural economics. Behavioural insights are a frequently utilised tool to link decision making processes with risk perception. However, the novelty of our study lies in applying this perspective to the context of military operations, a field rather characterised by the use of quantitative methods that try to reveal discrepancies between inputs, outputs and outcomes, but that oftentimes fail to explain the underlying causes for faulty or inconsistent decision making.

The research structure follows an adapted version of the classic IMRAD (Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion) format, as follows: in the Introduction section, the reader is presented the general context of the crisis, then the arising main research question and sub-questions are introduced, along with the overall purpose and relevance of our study. The review of the relevant literature in the field is also described in this section. Next, the Methodology part provides an in-depth insight into our approach, research methods and the justification for our choices. The major frameworks on which we base our analysis are also described in this section, as are the possible challenges and limitations arising from our research design. The Results section presents an in-depth analysis of our case study, adapting the facts to the concepts derived from our theoretical frameworks, zooming in from the general vulnerability of Japan to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and, finally the proceedings of Operation Tomodachi. The following part is focused on the GIS analysis process. This part presents the mapping of the general vulnerability of people and assets living in the exposed coastal areas of Japan and is a hybrid chapter, as it alternates results and discussion sections. The focal point of the next section is to bring together findings from the qualitative perspective of behavioural economics, by revealing the biases identified in the coordination processes during Operation Tomodachi. In the final part, the Conclusion, we provide concrete policy suggestions derived from our key findings, to inform decision makers when designing preventive strategies for disaster risk reduction, as well as comparing those to what concrete steps have been taken to promote a shift towards a preventive approach to disasters.

With regard to the paradigm on inquiry, we opt for a predominantly constructivist view. Prompted by the nature our research question and the theoretical frameworks from the domain of behavioural economics, our ultimate aim is to understand how a stressful context exacerbates an error-prone decision making process, rather than focusing on explaining why the decision making process is considered faulty in the first place, as critical theory would suggest. Moreover, the main theories of our interest, such as the cultural theory of risk and reflexive modernity are, by definition, proposing an alternative to the deconstructivist approach of the postmodernist cultural theory. Thus we avoid adopting a militant and activist position and we only elaborate policy recommendations with great caution from the point of view of a facilitator of multi-faceted possibilities of reconstruction of a social aspect. Ideally, we tend towards the disinterested scientific objectivity promoted by positivist and postpositivist paradigm, yet we recognise in our study a certain degree of ethical values, given the harsh conditions of our case study. Once again, we break away from the cultural theory and adhere to the constructivist view by promoting the use of behavioural insights for the reconstruction of the understanding of risk from a military perspective, instead of trying to uncover the power relations and structural causes of different psycho-social patterns. Rather than that, we accept these differences in a detached and objective manner and seek to use them for endorsing more applied and contextual policy measures.

The justification for the preference for the predominantly qualitative choice of methods lies in the nature of our research question, which is an exploratory one. Our intention is to establish priorities for the development and popularisation of contemporary frameworks of disaster risk analysis and to improve the final research design. The formulation of a hypothesis to be tested from a quantitative point of view is thus unnecessary. Rather, we look to acquire new insight into the issues arising during bilateral military cooperation in order to highlight more pervasive problems and, by this, to develop new hypotheses.

Therefore, we highlight the relevance of our study, by taking into consideration the above listed arguments; the ultimate purpose of the present research is to promote a shift from a paradigm focused on disaster response and disaster management to one that is centred more around disaster prevention and living with uncertainty. By successfully identifying factors that make certain populations settle in highly exposed areas on the one hand, and by accurately outlining the Japanese patterns of reaction in stressful situations, we aim to provide a model for better informed disaster risk reduction policies, that takes into account societal and cultural drivers of vulnerability rather than the already outdated view of hazards as entirely natural and external to our influence. In this sense, we base our analysis on the leading global frameworks that guide the efforts in disaster risk reduction, such as the 2015-2030 Sendai Framework and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Additionally, we employ behavioural economics theories such as the cultural theory of risk and the reflexive modernity theory centred around the concept of uncertainty to analyse the human behavioural responses in risky and uncertain situations.

Figure 1:’Innovation curve’ – paradigm shift from a responsive to a preventive approach (source: UNDRR, 2019, p. 70)

Furthermore, although based on a specific cultural and geographic context, the findings of the research also have a strong external validity. Accounting for the cultural specificity of a population has a tremendously beneficial effect in smoothing the cooperation between two or more parties undertaking disaster relief missions. This, again, requires a preventive approach, obligatory, we argue, especially in risk prone regions, such as Japan. The geospatial vulnerability assessment too, has a strong replicability potential, the methodology enabling researchers, NGOs, private firms or even governments to get an improved perception about some of the reasons that attract people to areas prone to be adversely affected by hazards.

Literature Review

For the proper implementation of a solid research design, an extensive literature review was conducted, uncovering the state-of-the-art approaches to the study of risk and vulnerability, as well as the major findings in the field of behavioural economics. The ATLAS.ti software for qualitative data research was a very practical tool to organise and revise the bibliography in a systematic manner. Thus, our assumptions are grounded on reliable theoretical works, the key facts and figures discussed in the case study are derived from various empirical studies and official reports, while the major frameworks of analysis provide the input for a sound methodology.

First of all, our research fundamentally represents a risk assessment of life and economic loss due to tsunami for the population living in the coastal areas of Japan. Therefore, the analysis starts by presenting the main developments in risk assessment and disaster risk reduction, introducing the main frameworks currently promoted by the think-tanks and intergovernmental agencies of the United Nations.

The early studies of risk, regarded disasters as ‘natural,’ thus entirely independent of any human activity, extreme events seen as geo-physical anomalies. The main mitigation strategy was the development of emergency response measures to match the expected strength of a disruptive ‘natural’ phenomenon. Thus, while we could not control for the impact of a hazard on a certain are, the most popular mitigation measures were concerned with forecasting and predicting the occurrence of a hazard based on historical. While this contributed to the refinement of forecasting techniques, this kind of approach is criticised for being highly physicalist and technocratic, sometimes even labelled as “an obsession with technology” (Wisner et al., 2004; Birkmann, 2013). The physicalist paradigm was prominent around the 1970’s when new theories criticising it started to emerge and correct for this highly deterministic approach.

With the rise of postmodernism, moral relativism and deconstructivism became more and more popular views to interpret the reality and the domain of risk was no exception. The result was the emergence of vulnerability thinking. Hagenlocher (2019) identifies two main schools of thought that contributed substantially to this paradigm shift since the later half of the 1970’s: the Marxist influenced political ecology and the school of development studies, in particular the group of authors promoting the entitlement theory. Representative for the first branch of scholars, Phil O’Keefe’s introduced a breakthrough perspective through the publication of Taking the Naturalness Out of Natural Disasters (1976) in collaboration with Ken Westgate and Ben Wisner. As the title suggests, the short but nonetheless fundamental paper observes how the poorest regions suffer more intensely from disasters, thus promoting the transition from natural disasters to disasters with socio-economic roots. In a similar key, Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate from 1998, observes that hunger is the result of the inequities of the food distribution and access systems, rather than of mere drought (Sen, 1981). According to his theory, changes in social organisation systems, such as rapid urbanisation, lead to a more restricted access to assets (land, savings, etc.), labour and social networks – commonly referred to as ‘entitlements’ – a deterioration which, accentuated by drought conditions further leads to an increased susceptibility to suffer from famine (Hagenlocher, 2019).

These give-and-take efforts between the physicalist approach versus critical theories, paved the way for authors such as Blaikie (1994) and Wisner (2004) to develop what became the fundamental formula of risk seen now as a function of both hazards and vulnerability. Rather than considering the people at risk as mere victims, Wisner’s view of vulnerability puts forth a focus on capacities, meaning that everyone has certain coping capacities, regardless of social status, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.

It is not female gender itself that marks vulnerability, but gender in a specific situation (Wisner et al., 2004, p. 16)

Vulnerability is, thus, context dependent and, as an extended consequence of this outlook shift, disasters themselves now became inseparable from everyday living patterns, a view radically different from the technocratic approach seeing them as isolated extreme events. Once the definition of risk became more anchored in reality through the acknowledgement of the vulnerability coordinate, it also became more complex and difficult to quantify. As a result, a number of frameworks have tried to simply these aggregated concepts to make it more user-friendly for policy makers since the late 1990’s.

Zooming in, we established that the vulnerability coordinate of risk is the most important addition to the traditional views of risk and the one that also acknowledges the human (lack of) coping capacity to the highest degree. In the present study, we further investigate the vulnerability coordinate through the lenses of behavioural economics. The reason for choosing this approach is twofold; one the one hand, we talk about the intrinsic value of the field of behavioural economics situated at the intersection of psychology studies and economics. Similarly to the contemporary frameworks of risk analysis that combine the human coordinate of vulnerability with more technical approaches, behavioural insights into the field or risk provide the same kind of holistic approach. The second reason is extrinsic and corresponds to the innovative view conferred to our study. While behavioural economics are most popularly matched with public healthcare policies and health-associated risks such as obesity (Kline, 2014), smoking (Parkes, Greenhalgh, Griffin, & Dent, 2008) or organ donations (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). However, we seek to extrapolate the demonstrated benefits of the utilisation of behavioural economics, to the field of disaster risk, a connection with tremendous potential, yet insufficiently explored; distinguishing among the most notable contributions, the study of Linnemayr, O’Hanlon, Uscher-Pines, Van Abel and Nelson (2016) describes how biases such as present bias or social influence bias can be used effectively in the field of disaster medicine. Stepping away from the field of healthcare, through the present work we encourage the exploration of nudging and biases in other domains of disaster relief and disaster preparedness, such as the military interventions.

The two concepts which are detrimental for our research are Reflexive modernity and Risk society. These are inseparable from the names of Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, two of the leading figures in contemporary sociology, who identified and theoreticised the notions (Beck, Lash & Giddens, 1994). The concept of Reflexive modernity is opposing the deconstructivist view embraced by postmodernism (Beck, Bonss & Lau, 2003), proposing a reconstructive approach and matching in this way our adopted paradigm of inquiry.

Our classic understanding of modernity, or industrial modernity with its linear development, is characterised by the humanity’s continuous strive for developing new technologies and global socio-economic systems in a just attempt to offer better living conditions for larger and larger proportions of society. By developing at an unprecedented fast pace, the opportunities for further innovation are also growing exponentially. Consequently, our impact on the planet has become so significant that we, as a species, though technological development, have reached a point where we can alter ecosystems with a force matching the natural climatological patterns. To put it in perspective, the early Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani has explicitly coined the term of “Anthropozoic era” all the way back in 1873 (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000, p. 483) to describe a new geologic era, in which humanity was the primary driving force on the planet, a force that was already noticeable at that time. Presently, the term ‘Anthropocene’ has been proposed for the geologic epoch in which we live, thus putting the humans at the core level of climate change. In spite of the fact that the more conservative scientific communities are still cautious in adopting the term, with the anthroposphere developing at this pace, it seems to only be a matter of time before we unanimously acknowledge our sizeable impact. Although open for debate, the starting point of the Anthropocene is generally considered to be the middle of the 18th century AD (Palsson et al. 2013; Tickell, 2011), when the Enlightenment movement in Western Europe culminated with the Industrial Revolution.

According to the reflexive modernity approach, the crucial benefit of acknowledging our technological prowess is the fact that we are forced to become aware of our increasingly greater responsibilities alongside. If we consider technological prowess a feature of the traditional, first modernity, then the concept of reflexive modernity, or second modernity (Beck & Grande, 2010) is characterised by us being more intensely aware of the consequences of the technological progression. In his paper from 1999, Risk and Responsibility, Giddens identifies this change in perception – and the kick-off of the reflexive modernity – to have happened around the middle of the 20th century, when

we stopped worrying so much about what nature could do to us, and we started worrying more about what we have done to nature (p. 3)

This breakthrough is the result of the Anthropocene paradigm and the promoter of the risk society.

The risk society concept is heavily interlinked with the reflexive modernity, in the sense that, while we are trying to design a safer environment to live in, a number of unforeseeable risks are following side by side, forcing us to permanently reconsider our position in the face of future threats. To elaborate on that, the first modernity paved the way to globalisation, to a world interconnected more than ever before through the growing adoption of the free market economy, the mechanisation of the modes of production or the uniformization of the available information through the availability of the internet. Along with the many significant improvements that globalisation brings to the world population, there is a previously unforeseeable amount of risks that affect large proportions of the population on a global scale. Essentially, for every technological advancement there is also a more or less foreseeable setback; for example, although the exportation of the global capitalist democratic system proves very efficient in reducing poverty, it also increases inequality or, if we consider that more and better treatments for various diseases are discovered, there is also an increased number of new diseases arising due to the greater mobility of people. As Giddens observes, the modern society is not necessarily riskier, but the risks are scaled up to a global level (2000, p. 34).

Methodology

As previously stated, given the nature of our main research question, the purpose of the present study is an exploratory one; in this sense, we are developing insights that can prove informative for any analysis of vulnerability. This implies a strong focus on the human coordinate in the context of military operations which tend to be rather concerned with logistical matters, often neglecting the socio-cultural implications, which can prove highly valuable for optimising the procedures. Therefore, we promote a prescriptive outlook, by suggesting ways in which insights from the field of behavioural economics can be used to address coordination inconsistencies between the two partner military forces on the one hand, and between the military and the civilian population on the other.

For a truthful understanding of the nature of the drivers of vulnerability in a certain context, we cannot disregard the social patterns and cultural background of the population. This is the reason why, in our qualitative analysis, we are making use of insights from the field of behavioural economics in order to classify different response patterns on the one hand, and various motivations for people to settle in highly exposed regions in the first place, on the other. Complementarily, in the present work we are also making use geospatial and statistical analysis to perform a multi-hazard risk and vulnerability assessment for the risk-prone areas. By employing GIS data and techniques, we are looking for identifiable socio-economic drivers of vulnerability for the population living in areas most prone to be adversely affected by earthquakes and tsunamis.

We propose an inductive approach, in the sense that we base our analysis on the particular, culturally and time specific case of Operation Tomodachi, seen as a Japan-US bilateral response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Thereupon, we are identifying patterns of responses to the disaster, both from the official military personnel side, as well as from the Japanese civilian population, patterns from which we develop our theories and explanations as to why certain measures were more effective than other and how the arising mishaps can be overcome in the future.

Furthermore, we propose the use of case study as our primary qualitative research method, suitable for the exploratory nature of this study, which lies not only in the research topic but also in the aforementioned inductive approach. It is not a usual practice to analyse what essentially is a military partnership in disaster response through a qualitative perspective. For this reason, we believe that the novelty of our study lies within the use of concepts from the fields of behavioural economics, anthropology and public policy, to assess the (in)effectiveness of DRR measures during a crisis situation. We believe that the lenses of social sciences can provide an innovative and necessary outlook, where mere descriptive statistical data analysis often overlooks underlying factors and reasons for a smooth cooperation. Our study aims to provide a more holistic approach, more in-tune with the present developments of risk analysis theory, which put a strong emphasis on the vulnerability coordinate of risk.

Complementarily, we also propose a scenario assessment of the risk of loss of life and damage to critical infrastructure for the coastal communities in Japan, in the case of a tsunami similar in strength to the one that devastated the eastern coastline on March 11, 2011. Shifting more to a quantitative method, yet still keeping in line with the proposed exploratory approach, for this part we perform several simulations to expand on our findings driven from the qualitative analysis. Using the QGIS software, we are making use of geospatial analysis techniques to identify vulnerability indicators for the coastal communities in Japan. The entire process of data preparation and processing will be described in detail in the corresponding section of the thesis.

Below, we introduce the main conceptual frameworks on which we base out analysis. If the IPCC framework establishes the authority of the vulnerability-oriented disaster risk analysis, the cultural theory of risk and the dual system of decision making further elaborate on our preferred behavioural perspectives. In the end, we also account for the main limitations of these frameworks and of our broader research design, in an attempt to become aware and tackle them throughout the main analysis.

IPCC Framework

In order to facilitate a thorough risk and vulnerability assessment for loss of life and critical infrastructure due to earthquake and tsunami for the coastal communities in Japan, we rely on the terminology and framework of analysis put forth by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the IPCC concentrates researchers from all the relevant disciplines related to climate change, to thoroughly analyse its global and local impact and implications, while suggesting in the same time possible paths for mitigation.

Their Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) from 2014, is the latest large scale work in the series of the most authoritative publications on the current state and knowledge of climate change. The AR5 provides an improved sound framework, addressing the main criticism of the Fourth report, systematically reviewed by the independent academic entity, InterAcademy Council (2010). As a consequence of the reformed methodology, the accuracy and confidence level of results were improved and IPCC thus became an undisputable leading actor in influencing policymaking in the field of climate change and general risk assessment.

Thus, the AR5 project benefited from the expertise of more than 800 top specialists (van Ypersele, 2017) in numerous domains related to climate and climate change sciences. Thus, basing their research on the most up-to-date scientific trends and findings, the IPCC is a leading authority in the domain of risk analysis, providing, in the same time, a consistent and reliable terminology which can be effortlessly adopted in multi-disciplinary research. Therefore, we deem appropriate to borrow the key terminology obtained from the IPCC AR5 publication, to familiarise the reader with the fundamental concepts used in the field of risk. For the reasons explained above, the following terms are used with the afferent meaning consistently throughout the text, unless otherwise specified:

Table 1: Definition of key concepts as presented in the IPCC framework (2014, p.5), see Figure 2

Risk has always been a debatable concept and different definitions capture different facets of it. Even nowadays no consensus was achieved with regard to what an optimal model of risk analysis might be, since various frameworks promote different focal points seeking to grasp the drivers of risk. IPCC distances from 20th century outlooks that, through highly technical lenses were portraying risk as an external outcome of hazards which were, in turn, seen as natural phenomena, out of the reach and control of humans. In response to these, after all simplistic theories, the IPCC puts forth a framework that describes risk as the balanced interaction between three distinct components: the probability of a hazard’s occurrence, the exposure of an area to be adversely impacted by a specific catastrophic event and the susceptibility of a target population to be affected by such an event. The IPCC theory paves the foundation for modern methodologies of risk assessment and, consequently, the majority of the scientific publications nowadays follow suit and develop varied indexes that take into consideration these three critical elements as drivers of risk. The visual representation of the latest IPCC model obtained from the 2014 AR5 publication is reproduced below:

Figure 2: The IPCC AR5 conceptual framework for understanding risk (IPCC, 2014, p.3)

Briefly describing the interaction between the various elements of the model, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have led to disruptive climate change effects which have been scrupulously documented in the past decades. Be it the increase of temperature or the rising sea level, there is an observed inequality in the way in which these emissions affect different geographic regions, compared to others. Following the scheme, the greenhouse gas emissions lead to an exacerbation of one or more of the three core dimensions of risk. Consequently, the resulting augmented risks negatively reflect into the socioeconomic processes, hindering any civic and institutional efforts to restrain the impact of disaster, a slackening which further erodes the mechanisms necessary for good governance. Further, this general socioeconomic instability feeds back on to the emissions, enclosing the vicious circle and generating a destructive snowball effect.

Cultural theory of risk

The cultural theory of risk has its essence in the group-grid typology developed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas and the expert in political science Aaron Wildavsky, two emblematic exponents of social sciences in the 20th century.

The cultural theory shares concepts with the previously introduced theoretical model of reflexive modernity. In this sense, the cultural theory framework is based on two assumptions identified by Tansey and O’riordan: the first assumption refers to the fact that “members of groups with a common outlook, are disposed to impose order on reality in particular ways” (1999, p. 73), a concept similar to the ontological security proposed by Giddens (1990). The second assumption is that the societal systems that we have created are comprised of so many variables that they are ultimately uncertain and unpredictable (Tansey & O’riordan, 1999, pp. 73-74).

Thus, linking the cultural theory model to the notion of risk, the framework provides a solid basis for understanding how the concept of risk is socially constructed. However, instead of following a postmodernist paradigm of thought, the model provides a constructivist approach; rather than accounting for an infinite number of individually constructed notions of risk, the cultural theory envisions only a restrained number of valid interpretations of threat and danger, arising as “cultural biases” (Tansey & O’riordan, 1999, p. 74).

To precisely illustrate the constructivist approach of the model, Douglas proposes a social identity typology model, represented as an intersection between two axes of coordinates: the horizontal one describing the strength of adherence to a group and the vertical one measuring the scope of control within these groups (Tansey & O’riordan, 2007, pp. 82-85). The group-grid typology has been used so extensively when analysing patterns of responses to various risks, that it is often wrongly identified with the cultural theory itself, rather than being considered an extension of it. Below there is a graphical representation of the group-grid typology, concisely presenting the key distinctive features of each category:

Figure 3: Representation of the grid-group typology (source: Bruce, 2013, p. 45)

Thus, the four resulting categories are low grid-low group (individualism), high grid-low group (fatalism), high grid-high group (hierarchy) and low grid-high group (egalitarianism). Each of these 4 groups resulting from the intersection of the group and grid axes, describe incompatible ways of social organisation, but these are only idealisations, as in reality people share a mixture of traits from each category. Thus, it is the dominant category that dictates how an individual orientates differently in society and has a distinct apprehension of threat, danger and the ways to control these. The figure below shows how 5 key characteristics differ among each of the four typologies to help the reader understand the differences:

Figure 4: Interpretations of grid-group typology (source: Ostrander, 1982)

Hierarchists (high group-high grid): this typology envisions a sort of societal organisation in which the roles of its members are rigidly prescribed, making it easy to box various categories of citizens together and to ascribe these to higher categories. Members of such a society are ranked according to tradition and functionality and such a structure tends to get rigid and highly conservative to change, fearing social unorder. Basil Bernstein (1977) points to the modern Japanese family as representative for this type of organisation and, by extrapolation, the broader conservative democratic Japanese society fits in this typology.

Egalitarians (high group-low grid): religious sects have traditionally been ascribed to this typology, including Mary Douglas herself (2006, pp. 5-6). Assigning authority and leadership tends to be the most difficult process in this case, as the preferred organisation is based on egalitarian principles. Douglas further observes that societies thus organised tend to have a black-and-white view of the world, seeing any outsiders of their groups as threatening to the inner values (p. 5). It is difficult to maintain stability within a tightly bound group with loose ranking procedures. The religious sect form of political organisation can be extrapolated to either theocratic states or nations where Marxist-influenced ideologies are enforced.

Individualists (low group-low grid): people belonging to this group are libertarians, individuals characterised by high flexibility. Not being bound to group adhesion or rigid protocols, people with this predominant trait are very adaptable to any form of societal control, either in hierarchical or egalitarian regimes. Since group control is weak for this group, individuals are more self-oriented, thriving in competitive environments where they can pursue personal benefits. A representative political system for this category is American liberalism, where citizens are responsible for their own efforts in pursuing the American dream.

Fatalists (low group-high grid): also frequently described as isolates, individuals belonging to this group form a very peculiar category, hard to grasp and whose members are not as common to encounter for the average citizen. The reason behind this is the fact that individuals from this group are voluntarily – as in the case of monks or asceticists – or forcibly separated from the broader society – as in the case of prisoners and slaves. Their opinions are generally either inexistent or not truly taken into consideration. Douglas puts in this category both the very destitute members of society along with the Queen of England (2006, p.6), a rather decorative entity bound by a rigid protocol.

The dual system of decision making

Last but definitely not least, probably the most important theory in behavioural economics and the sine qua non ingredient for any research in this field, is the dual process model theoreticised by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In 2002, the scientific community was surprised to the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences being awarded to Kahneman, a psychologist with no previous formal expertise in the field of economics. The awards comes as recognition of long lasting scientific collaboration between Kahneman and Tversky, aiming to uncover the cognitive processes involved in decision making under risky and uncertain conditions.

Table 2: Characteristics of system 1 and system 2 (source: Kannengiesser & Gero, 2019)

Essentially, what the dual system theory describes is the dichotomy between two complementary dimensions of human thought and perception: the first system is associated with intuition, while the second one is linked with reasoning (Kahneman, 2002, pp. 450-452). In his Prize Lecture essay, Kahneman describes System 1 and System 2 as being responsible with the formation of impressions versus judgements, respectively (pp. 450-452). The System 1 processes are automatisms, quick responses that require no intellectual effort/ In contrast, System 2 cognitive operations are time consuming, sequential and intellectually effortful.

Part of the research of Tversky and Kahneman is extensively focused on the study of heuristics, or the mental shortcuts used when we are facing uncertain situations, where our judgement capacity is impaired or timely constrained. Through various simplifying and reductionist processes, System 1 takes precedence in forming judgements, making use of fewer information to shorten the required time for reaching a conclusion. According to Tversky and Kahneman, “heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors” (1974, p. 1124), since they lack the systematicity and rigour of System 2 thinking.

Moreover, stress, as a psychological phenomenon, increases the usage of heuristics when making decisions in time-limit situations and, in turn, it further generates biases – including social biases – which threaten the accuracy and validity of a certain decision in a crucial moment (Yu, 2016). Alexander (2006) characterises an acutely stressful situation as being sudden, novel and intense in nature; stress negatively affects information processing and disrupts goal oriented behaviour. Additionally, when groups from different cultures interact with each other, as in our case, this can cause serious problems by exacerbating the effects.

The question is how can two systems based on strong hierarchical structures – such as the US military and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces – interact and successfully cooperate in a crisis situation, as was the case of 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake? What are the biases and heuristics that are involuntarily exacerbated by the acute stress when trying to accommodate decision making in this new context and how can these biases be accounted for? Before presenting the major challenges to our proposed research design, we tackle these questions in the main body of the research.

Challenges and limitations of our proposed model

Considering the general research design, a number of possible shortcomings need to be taken into consideration:

Given the exploratory nature of our research, there are questions that naturally arise concerning the external validity. By aiming to acquire better insight into the response patterns during a crisis that requires a sound military collaboration, there is a tendency to draw conclusions that are too narrow and tied to the very specific nature of the crisis at hand. This is a strong balance check that prompts the author to permanently be aware of the broader context by linking the findings to the general theory.

Stemming from the previous point, the predominantly qualitative methods of our research instruct us to be exceptionally cautious when formulating prescriptions, especially in the form of policy recommendations. While we cannot deny the improved internal validity provided by the rigour of using a multiple regression model on a representative dataset, which confers the necessary credibility for a more robust and verifiable conclusion, the qualitative analysis of a case study has the major benefit of identifying root causes, otherwise indiscernible through other quantitative research techniques.

With regard to the IPCC AR5 conceptual framework, one limitation that can be attributed to the model is the fact that it is not focused enough on explaining the root causes for a population to become vulnerable. While it facilitates a quantitative approach by decomposing the risk into three key components which are further disaggregated into more specific and measurable indicators, the model does not sufficiently account for the more difficult to grasp underlying causes such as power relations or political and economic ideologies, such as the Pressure & Release model proposed by Wisner et al. in 2004. However, the IPCC AR5 model brings with it the major benefit of having a strong climate change component.

Another point worth being aware of is the use of the group-grid model of analysing different types of behaviour when facing risk. In our attempt to recognise types of biases that arise when certain typologies resort to different types of heuristics, we need to make bold assumptions that help us generalise certain patterns of behaviour as representative for the wider population. Thus, we risk falling into our own trap and present biased results when seeking to identify biases in others. It is also true, however, that our purpose is to analyse collective rather than individual responses to the 2011 disaster and, in this respect, we believe that broad assumptions – albeit not applicable to each and every single member of a group – might prove highly valuable in critical situations.

Case Study

Per our qualitative choice of methods described above, our case study has a triple scope, zooming in from general to particular. In terms of geographical extent, we confine both our geospatial and behavioural insights analysis to the archipelago of Japan, with a strong focus on the coastal regions of the main island of Honshu. As a time reference point, we scrutinise the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami from 11 March, 2011. Finally, as the title of the present study points out, the contextual focus is Operation Tomodachi, the U.S.-Japan bilateral military cooperation in HA/DR efforts in the aftermath of the disaster.

General vulnerability

With a population of almost 127 million people, Japan is an archipelago nation comprised of 5 main islands (from north to south – Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa) and several thousands of smaller ones. The terrain is predominantly mountainous, with few extremely densely populated plains on the central and eastern side of Honshu, which are the economic and administrative engine, with immense urban agglomerations around Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.

It is a widely known fact that Japan is one of the countries with the most intense seismic activity. This comes as an unfortunate coupling of two main geological factors: firstly, the archipelago lays at the intersection of 4 major tectonic plates (North American/Okhotsk, Eurasian/Amur, Philippines and Pacific plates), which frequently collide with each other, generating an intense seismic activity, especially around the Tokyo-Yokohama densely inhabited area. Coupled with this, Japan is also precariously situated along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a nearly continuous chain of volcanoes, which generates around 90% of the world’s earthquakes (Ring of Fire, n.d.). Annually, abound 15 volcanic events are produced in Japan by the 110 active volcanoes in the archipelago (Yamasato, Funasaki & Takagi, 2013, p. 101).

Figure 5: Tectonic plates of Japan (source: Earth Observatory of Singapore

(URL: https://www.earthobservatory.sg/blog/kumamoto-earthquakes-reveal-importance-active-fault-studies-sumatra-and-southeast-asian-region)

Tsunamis (津波: literally meaning harbour wave) have also always been a frequent reoccurring hazard in Japan, hence the international adoption of the Japanese term. Given the tectonic alignment of the 4 major plates covering the archipelago, most of the earthquakes happen in the Pacific, off the eastern coast, thus increasing the exposure of Tokyo and other important urban areas up north. The same scenario also applies to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, when, as the name suggests, to north-eastern region was heavily affected, including the major coastal city of Sendai.

Even though we adopt a predominantly qualitative approach, the risk components described in the IPCC conceptual framework need to be specifically quantified for a comprehensive assessment and a rigorous scientific research design. Thus we follow the model developed in the World Risk Report, by experts from the Institute of Environment and Human Security of United Nations University (UNU-EHS). SMART indicators were developed to facilitate the operationalisation the risk components. Based on elaborate algorithms, the over disaster risk is centralised in the table below under the WorldRiskIndex column and broken down into multiple components. Out of the 171 countries analysed examined, Japan occupies a worrying place 17.

Table 3: WorldRiskIndex Overview (source: Garschagen et al., 2016, p. 64)

Observing the values for each of the components, it is striking that Japan is in the top 20 most disaster risk prone countries in the world in spite of scoring impressively good numbers in the fields of vulnerability, susceptibility and technical preparedness. However, Japan has the 4th highest exposure to be adversely hit by hazards, given the geological conditions described above. Japan is also the highest ranking country among the most developed and technologized ones and this fact only solidifies the conclusion that technological advancement alone is not enough against disaster risk.

As a result, the Japanese population is intensively taking part in drills and evacuation exercises in the case of major cataclysms since an early age. This way, children get accustomed to unusual disruptive situations and, through repeated and consistent actions enforced by protocol learn to develop automatic responses to such acute situations and, most importantly, to remain calm (Sun & Yamori, 2018). What is more, such a well enforce educational planning is also logistically supported by a responsive warning system and information dissemination channels operated by the governmental agencies, especially the Japan Meteorological Agency. Below is a diagram showing the structure of information sharing channels from the officials to the lay people:

Figure 6: Information sharing channels from JMA (source: JMA, 2012, p. 3)

The Earthquake Early Warning is a complex, multi-actor system which places at its foundation the Japanese Meteorological Agency – the leading entity at the national level, but also a respectable authority at an international scale, focused on monitoring extreme weather events and other disruptive phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes and typhoons. The figure above reveals how efficiently the different competent public authorities in Japan interact with each other concomitantly to ensure a balanced and uniform dissemination of information. At the end of this architecture are the private citizens, which are alerted in the same time from multiple sources sharing the same core scientifically informed emergency message.

Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown

On March 3, 2011, Japan faced its most powerful earthquake, of 9.1 magnitude on the Richter scale and was confronted with the most acute crisis in the nation’s post-war history in the aftermath. The Great East Japan Earthquake, as it is officially known since April 1, 2011 (JICA, n.d.), was formed through the convergence between the North American plate and the Pacific plate. The collision released a huge amount of energy in the Japan Trench, hence the extremely high magnitude earthquake and the subsequent tsunami.

The official time is 14:46 JST. 8.6 seconds after the detection the first P-wave was detected by the nearest JMA seismic station to the epicentre, the early warning system set off (JMA, 2011). The epicentre was a little less than 130 km off the Sanriku coast, where the major city of Sendai is located, so the immense energy dislocated a large amount of water resulting in gigantic waves with a maximum height of over 40 metres.

In spite of the extensive experience in disaster response and the widely acknowledged preparedness against calamities, the Japanese government was overwhelmed by what Yoshizaki (2011) calls “a complex disaster.” A triple shock – the earthquake, the subsequent tsunami and the failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant – represents an unfortunate clear example of a cascading hazard (Auckland Council, 2014, p.40).

Table 4: 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami impact on human lives and economic assets (source: NGDC/WDS, n.d.-a; NGDC/WDS, n.d.-b)

The table above is based on information obtained from NOAA databases for major earthquake and tsunami. As we can see, it was the tsunami, rather than the earthquake itself that produced the more significant damage, both in terms of human life loss and economic loss.

The humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations conducted by the joint efforts of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the United Stated Forces Japan under Operation Tomodachi proved to be a very efficient example of bilateral cooperation between two strategic military partners. The smoothness of the operations, was tremendously facilitated by the well acknowledged preparedness of the Japanese civil society, proving to be very disciplined to ensure a resilient response. However, despite the encouraging cohesion, the aftermath of the crisis is catastrophic. The devastating effects the large numbers of casualties, injured and displaced people are still lingering in the present, as a significant amount of people are still not properly relocated and the pervasive consequences of large community displacements translate into deep societal and environmental changes.

Operation Tomodachi

In the aftermath of the complex 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. was the first external party to which the Government of Japan turned for help. The two countries have had a strategic alliance since the end of WWII, when the U.S. committed to ensure the security of Japan, given they were granted the permission for a permanent presence on its territory, thus allowing the U.S. to extend its influence in East Asia. The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between Japan and the United States of America signed in 1960 still guides the partnership between the two nations, enabling Japan to slowly develop its own military capabilities, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). As a result, it is only natural that the two parties came together in such an extraordinary situation.

With a personnel reaching around 40,000 troops stationed across all the 5 main islands of Japan in 2011 (Feickert, 2011), the U.S. responded to the urgent need for immediate action with an unprecedented large scale military intervention and a collaboration between the JSDF and the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD), an operation which signified a breakthrough in the relationship between the two countries, since no previous joint military drills or protocol were established before the disaster, in spite of the long lasting partnership. The mission went under the name of Operation Tomodachi (トモダチ作戦: literally translated as Operation Friends).

The U.S. military forces deployed during Operation Tomodachi worked under the name of Joint Support Force (JSF). To ensure a smooth cooperation with the JSDF, there were established three Bilateral Coordination Action Teams (BCATs) established in three key locations: Ichigaya (Tokyo), the headquarters of the Japanese Ministry of Defense and JGSDF, Yokota (Tokyo), a joint air military base shared by U.S. Air Force and JASDF and Sendai, the major city in the middle of the most heavily affected area.

The table below draws a parallel between the components that form the military forces in the U.S. and Japan.

Table 5: US and Japan corresponding military branches and their primary roles (source: U.S. Military: Rank & Structure: Branches, n.d.)

One clarification that needs to be made is the fact that within the U.S. Armed Forces, there is also a 5th active branch, the Coast Guard. This branch, however, employs the fewest personnel of all the five branches and, during peacetime, falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, while the other four under the Department of Defense. Similarly, the Japan Coast Guard, although tasked with ensuring the national maritime security, is subordinated to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, while the other three military service branches respond to the Ministry of Defense.

Below, we reproduce a detailed chronology of the operations after the earthquake, as compiled by the officials at the Yokota joint military air base of JASDF and U.S. Air Force:

Figure 7: Chronology of Operation Tomodachi (sourse: Wilson, 2012, pp. 26-27)

In terms of logistical contribution, Tatsumi (2012) quantifies that at the peak of the operations, the JSDF concentrated around 106,000 personnel for rescue and recovery missions, transportation, livelihood assistance and emergency rehabilitation assistance operations. On the U.S. side, the peak efforts numbered around 24,000 personnel simultaneously in the field, operating 24 ships and 189 aircraft. Tatsumi further observes that both the JGSDF and the U.S. Marine Corps from the American side actively engaged in the cooling down of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima power plant. It is also worth mentioning that during Operation Tomodachi, the Ministry of Defense resorted to the activation of reservists for the first time in the history of the strategic partnership established in 1954 (Tatsumi, 2012, p. 12).

While Operation Tomodachi is regarded as an impressive and relatively impromptu disaster relief intervention, the mission had its own limitations. As a result, multiple controversies have been brought up for debate, among which we identify the precarious information sharing channels, the lack of common leadership and the highly controversial deliberate exposure of the military personnel to the radioactive radiations during the Fukushima interventions.

Major criticism during Operation Tomodachi

First of all, the complex nature of the disaster poses a any party in a very uncomfortable, high-pressure scenario. Regardless of how many drills are systematically conducted (or not) between the two military forces or among the civil population, nobody could foresee the rapid onset and the cascading effects of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a 40.5 tsunami wave at its highest which, in turn, lead to the failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Secondly, probably the most discussed and critical point of criticism is the improper gathering and sharing of accurate information between the two strategic partners. Dialogue is what should facilitate an already burdening and error-prone innovative intervention; instead, it produced more syncopes and delay which could have proven critical in a swifter and better equipped intervention.

The Japanese lack of understanding of U.S. capabilities reveals systematic miscommunication between the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the US military personnel deployed in the archipelago. While the two countries do have some experience in joint military drills, a disaster relief scenario had never been enacted before 2011, as the focus of the training was the armed threat of a third party, say North Korea. Thus, the Japanese had not inventoried the U.S. equipment that can be effectively used in disaster relief procedures.

From the other side, a striking observation arising from Table 1 is the fact that, although the Japanese military system generally follows the U.S. organisation, there is no service branch matching the responsibilities of the U.S. Marine Corps. This was a massive liability during the critical first hours of the operations, as described by the senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, Grant Newsham. In an interview for The Japan Times (Johnston, 2016), he says:

The lack of a JSDF amphibious capability was highlighted after the tsunami in the several thousand Japanese who died in the first 24 to 48 hours because of the JSDF’s inability to get into the affected area, from the sea, and rescue them. The Maritime Self-Defense Force got there quickly but all they could do was really float offshore.

(Grant Newsham for The Japan Times)

The U.S. lack of understanding of Japan’s overall concept of operations is also a consequence of the inappropriate usage of information sharing channels. What is more, this also reveals and underlying insufficient understanding of how the Japanese civil society reacts and interacts during emergency situations. While there are several incidents and controversies involving U.S. military personnel and the civil society, especially around the US bases in Okinawa, the U.S. indecisiveness in assuming a leading role further slowed down the communication process and the timely intervention.

Contingency planning with the private sector can prove very useful, especially when the private sector is the one that is more severely affected. The Japanese resilience in face of disasters has long been praised and they have established themselves as an authority figure for preparedness against earthquakes. Drills are conducted from kindergarten and the response is almost a reflex, so the U.S. side could have tapped more efficiently into this resilient resource of manpower on the ground level.

Exposing military personnel to unnecessary high levels of radiations is probably the most controversial aspect of the operation. In a situation of massive public confusion soon after the meltdown, the U.S. military tried to provide some feeling of control over the situation and some personnel was unnecessarily deployed to conducting analysis in areas with dangerous radiation levels in order to give an impression of authority. The protective equipment was later proved to still be unsafe for such high concentrations of radiations (Wilson, 2012). The case gained publicity, all the more due to the fact that the USS Ronald Reagan the largest aircraft carrier with a capacity of more than 5,000 people (Burke, 2016). After years of judiciary endeavours, the U.S. military personnel were allowed to pursue lawsuits against TEPCO, the operating company of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. As of 2016, it was reported that over 400 military personnel involved in Operation Tomodachi and exposed to increased levels of radiations have joined the lawsuit (Kageyama, 2016). On top of that, Pentz Gunter reports the unfortunate news that nine of the lawsuit filers died (Pentz Gunter, 2018) as of 2018; it is uncertain how many others who have not joined the suit also died or suffered from health problems.

Geospatial analysis of the exposed population and assets

As an extension to the theoretical analysis through the lenses of behavioural economics, we use geospatial analysis techniques for a more detailed assessment of the population and asset susceptibility to be adversely affected by the occurrence of tsunamis. In addition, we are identifying general socio-economic patterns which help us in explaining a possible systemic vulnerability of the population living by the sea. We use the free Quantum GIS version 3.4.5 (Madeira) software for performing the geospatial analysis.

Adopting a progressive step-by-step process, we are first analysing a general national overview of the exposed coastlines and a layout of all the nuclear facilities in Japan. Further, we use grid data to assess certain direction of population exposure in the coastal areas. Coupled with this, we move on the analysing assets exposure through land cover analysis. In the end, we zoom out again to tie the findings together with a hedonic model analysis of public risk perception in relation with property value.

Table 6: Primary data used for GIS analysis

The most accurate map of the Japanese archipelago freely accessible to us, is the one comprised in the world map provided by GADM data. In order to obtain a clear image of the entire length of the shoreline, we extracted the contour lines from the polygon layer representing Japan, hence the need for a layer which takes into account even as many of the tiny uninhabited islands as possible. After creating the 25 km. contour of the coastal area of Japan, the resulting map has the shape of an atoll, with a hollow middle region that emphasises the margins. We use this layer as the baseline for clipping any other layers containing socio-economic and administrative information, especially the GAR15 grid vector measuring exposure.

Since no polygon layer displaying the coastal area of Japan was available, we created it based on the UNEP and CIESIN (Center for International Earth Science Information Network) definition of coastal population as communities living within 100 km. from the sea (SEDAC, n.d., “Some 37 percent,” n.d.). However, we further reduced the distance to 25 km. The reason for this decision is the fact that Japan is a generally long and narrow country and a 100 km buffer would stretch from one side of the country to the other, with very few exceptions. Thus, we resolved to reduce this buffer extent to a quarter, as this is more than enough to convey the suburban regions of the cities adjacent to the sea, thus facilitating our assumptions.

A very important source of geospatial data and methodological information is National Land Numerical Information (NLNI), a free Japanese repository founded in 1974 in the administration of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism that provides “numerical data prepared from information related to the national lands to support the promotion and formulation of land planning such as the Comprehensive National Development Plan, National Land Use Planning, and National Spatial Strategy” (NLNI, n.d.). With an impressive amount of information on administrative regions, land use, waterways, roads, buildings and landmarks, the national and subnational level datasets produced are very rigorous and well-documented, thus making them free reliable tools for any kind of independent research.. All of the products of our interest are point, line or polygon vectors, making them very user-friendly and easy to tailor and combine with the previously mentioned data from the other sources. The features we are most interested are the shapefiles describing socio-economic indicators, particularly land price for performing the perceptual analysis with the hedonic model. In this way, combining information on the socio-economic composition of coastal areas, we are able to track vulnerability indicators for the population.

Nuclear exposure overview

Data preparation and processing:

In order to accurately evaluate the tsunami impact, we use a combination of two distinct datasets; the first one is produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the globally renowned scientific entity specialised on the analysis of oceans and atmosphere, in collaboration with the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), the host of the largest archive of environmental data (NGDC/WDS, n.d.-b). The shapefile is a point vector based on a database documenting major tsunamis from 2000BC until present. There is extensive information, including the wave height, the number of deaths and people injured, or the economic loss for the majority of the events. The more recent the event is, the more data points there are to record the impact in various locations. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake is one of the most meticulously recorded events, with almost 5,400 separate entries across the coast of Japan, both from official estimates and from eyewitness accounts.

The second dataset used for quantifying the tsunami damage is a UNISDR product, also part of the GAR 2015 project (UNISDR, 2015). The polygon vector measures the wave runup – that is, the water level onshore above the sea level, or the land cover flooded by the tsunami – on a global scale, for a 500 years recurrence period scenario. By combining the two datasets, we are able to estimate the impact of a severe tsunami both in terms of height and inland runup alike.

When categorising the nuclear power plants by the type of activity, we assumed the most operational scenario for each station. That is, when a power plant has one or more operating reactors, we labelled the entire station as Operational, in spite of the fact that one or more of the remaining reactors’ activity is indefinitely suspended or closing down. The same situation applies for the 3-reactor Shimane power plant,: Shimane-1 in the process of being decommissioned, Shimane-2 currently inactive and Shimane-3 approved for construction (JAIF, 2019); we labelled the entire power plant as being Under Construction, although it is completely inactive at present.

Interpretation of results:

Figure 8: Map of the nuclear power plants in Japan

Having a first look at the map showing the layout of all the Japanese nuclear power plants, we observe that all of them – 21 at present, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (PRIS, 2019) – are situated directly by the sea. It is a standard procedure when choosing the location for a nuclear power plant – or any other kind of power plant – to place it near a large body of water, for several reasons:

Nuclear power plants demand a large amount of water for the cooling-down processes when operating in business-as-usual conditions (World Nuclear Association, 2019; Styles III, 2017);

Another technical reason is that in case of an exceptional accident or disaster, nuclear power plants require large quantities of water to immediately reduce the excess heat produced by the reactor (World Nuclear Association, 2019);

From an economic point of view, building a nuclear power facility implies huge costs, according to the MIT nuclear science and engineering head Jacopo Buongiorno (“Floating nuclear power,” 2018). Thus, being close to the sea, reduces the transportation costs for the construction site, where the prime materials or the raw fuels (even in the case of coil power plants) can be easily shipped directly to the site.

However, if we look at the tsunami run-up extent layer, we observe that only the southern and eastern coasts are prone to be flooded, while the northern side is utterly unaffected. This can be explained by the fact that the northern side of Honshu and the western side of Hokkaido are facing the Sea of Japan (alternatively, the East Sea) a generally rough, but almost completely enclosed sea also bordered by Russia, China and he two Korean states, small enough so that large waves are unlikely to form, even in the case of large earthquakes.

Figure 9: Map of 2011 Tohoku tsunami height

The term tsunami is generally associated by the broad public with catastrophic waves, when, in fact, waves even less than 1m high are regarded as tsunami, as long as they are the result of an earthquake. However, in our analysis, we are mostly concerned by the waves that have the height and force to cause significant damage. Therefore, we restrain our focus to the region most prone to be hit by such unusually destructive tsunamis, the north-eastern part of the Honshu island. For this purpose, we make use of the post-disaster data compiled and released by NCEI, measuring the height of the tsunami caused by the 2011 earthquake. As observed in the case study description, the prefectures with the highest mortality rates were Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima.

Population exposure

Data preparation and processing:

The Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) is a report by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) issued every two years since 2009, which documents the measures taken throughout the world by the public and private sector for reducing the risk of disasters. As an effort of the UN institutions, in their analysis, GAR naturally takes into consideration well established and adhered to frameworks for risk analysis, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction or the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Thus, the report does not have a solely descriptive purpose, informing the stakeholders on the progress made towards better system-based DRR policies, but it also has a prescriptive focus; in this sense, GAR explicitly encourages a paradigm shift from a predominantly reactive and first response based disaster management, to a more preventive approach, that involves living with uncertainty (UNDRR, 2019, p.3).

In addition to the biannual report, GAR specialists also produce comprehensive datasets by country that are freely available for non-commercial use on the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform from UNOCHA. Even though the 2017 and 2019 reports were published, GAR15, from 2015, saw the release of one of the most rigorously documented datasets with extensive information about global exposure. Generated by combining other global datasets, as a collaboration between UNEP/GRID primarily and EU Joint Research Centre (JRC), World Agency of Planetary Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction (WAPMERR), and Kokusai Kōgyō Co., LTD. as partners, what GAR15 essentially does is to comprise statistical information into geospatial shapefiles. For the map of Japan, the shapefile is a point vector layer consisting of 23,301 points/rows covering the entire land surface of the archipelago. There are 55 columns containing information on various socio-economic indicators.

Interpretation of results:

The figure below shows the predominant distribution of the rural (red) and urban (green) population. As we can see, the urban population is limited to very few concentration spots: the Tokyo-Yokohama area, the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area and the city of Nagoya in-between. However, these three areas comprise about two thirds of the total population of Japan, in a megalopolis called Tokaido (Sorensen, 2019, pp. 25-28).

Figure 10: Rural and urban population distribution in Japan

The rural population, on the other hand, although less than 9% of the total population (World Bank, 2018) is much more evenly distributed across the habitable area. Denser rural areas are loosely concentrated around the smaller cities and around the coasts. Thus, it is primarily the people in rural areas that are the focus of our analysis, since these are significantly more economically disadvantaged than their urban co-nationals and they also inhabit the coastal regions of our concern.

Figure 11: Map showing low and high income rural communities in coastal Japan

The map above displays the distribution of low income rural citizens (red) in contrast with the high income ones (green/blue). We can observe alternating zones along the coastlines that are much more accentuated in the case of low income people living in the countryside. The blue dots represent the concentration of high income people which is higher than the maximum density of the low income people, as it is also described in the legend. This means that, in general, most rural communities are relatively homogenous from an economic point of view, people enjoying a satisfying revenue. However, some communities present a higher of inequality among the citizens. Having a closer look, we observe that it is not uncommon that these rural communities where economic inequality is more pervasive are mostly centred around the greater urban settlements.

A possible explanation for this apparent systematic inequality can be made by interpreting the general organisation of the communities themselves. The higher the proximity to the urban centres, the more apparent the economic inequality. Although, living in the city provides more variety in job opportunities, it also presupposes an increased competitiveness. Drawing the parallel to the grid-group model, the suburban life may shape much more individualistic communities, more suited to the competitive job market in the city. In contrast, we observe a greater economic cohesiveness and affluence in the coastal communities situated farther from the city. Following the same logic and model, we can argue that more isolated rural communities tend to be more egalitarian, as the members require a better mutual understanding and cooperation to be more resilient to the diminished access to resources and opportunities. This reasoning is enforced if we look at the communities on small islands, especially visible around the Okinawa archipelago. These tiny islands, which are overwhelmingly rural with limited resources and lack of variety of employability options, host closely bound communities that manage to sustain a relatively high standard of living. This also provides an insight into how profitable living by the sea is for the people which are, in general, as observed by Minami (2008, pp. 5-17) poorer and with a higher GINI coefficient than the ones living in cities.

Economic loss

Data preparation and processing:

For conducting the exposure analysis for the assets in the coastal areas of Japan, we utilise the recommended mapping procedure put forth by the Knowledge Portal of UN-SPIDER (2015). Data preparation requires three basic layers: one showing the extent of the natural disaster, one comprising land cover data and the extent of our region of interest. For measuring the tsunami extent we use the Global Tsunami extent for a 500-year return period shapefile, while land cover information is obtained from a JAXA High-Resolution Land Use and Land Cover map of Japan. As it was mentioned before, we use the atoll-shaped map of coastal Japan as the basis for our area of interest. In addition to the standard procedure proposed by UN-SPIDER, we extend our analysis, with a time series perspective. The JAXA land cover data facilitates this procedure, by providing two distinct land cover layers, completed in two different time dimensions, conveniently composed before (2006-2011) and after (2014-2016) the March 11, 2011 disaster.

The pre-disaster land cover layer has a maximum resolution of 10m x 10m, while the post-disaster one has a 30m x 30m resolution. To obtain balanced results for both before and after time frames, we utilised a common 100m x 100m resolution for both periods. While this means losing a some precision, it also facilitates a faster processing time, which is highly valuable when analysing information on such an extended scale, as the national level.

Figure 12: Land cover map for measuring coastal area exposure

The land cover layer was clipped over the coastline buffer. The resulting layer was recategorized transformed from raster to polygon vector. In this way, we were now able to determine the area and perimeter for each resulting polygon. To calculate the assets’ exposure, we sum up all the area values of the polygons within the same class of land type from the coastal region. Our main interest is focused on the classes covering information on urban/built-up area, rice paddy and crop land categories to describe the agricultural activity and barren soil, as we expect a slight increase of this category due to the devastating effect of sea water intrusion generated by the tsunami.

Interpretation of results:

The table below shows the results of land cover classification, revealing the area corresponding to each topographic category. The JAXA dataset does not take into account the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami event when composing the layer with information between 2006 – 2011. However, we use the disaster as a point of reference for the before and after analysis.

Table 7: Area of land cover classes for the Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures

As stated before, our main field of interest are constructed area, agricultural land and barren soil. First of all, we notice a slight decrease in the urban/constructed area. Even though Japan is continuously developing its urban settlements, this decrease does not necessarily come as a surprise. The results can be understood as the effect of the irreversible damage of the earthquake and tsunami. Even though redevelopment efforts were made to recover, reconstruct or relocate the destroyed buildings, these efforts have not matched the destructive effects of the disaster at the time the 2014-2016 layer was composed.

The other category that we are interested in is the land used for agricultural purposes, defined here by the classes showing rice paddies and crops, respectively. If we compare the total agricultural area from the three prefectures analysed before and after 2011, we see similar results, 260,716 ha in the period before, compared with the 258,417 ha after the event. However, looking at the disaggregated results, we notice a significant recategorization of used land. If between 2006 – 2011, rice paddies were spread on a surface more than double the size of other crops, we see an almost equal share in the period 2012 – 2014. The rice paddy area decreased significantly after the tsunami, the increase in land used for other crops compensated for this negative effect. Indeed, comparing the two images in Figure 10, and looking at the large rice paddy area in the south of Sendai, adjacent to the sea, we are inclined to believe that the sea water pumped by the waves changed the soil composition, making the land impracticable for rice farming. Instead, people were forced to look for alternative crops, more adapted to higher salinity.

In the same region described above, it is also obvious the extension of bare land in the disaster aftermath. The results are consistent across the larger area of the coastal zone in the three prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima; if we look at the last line in the table, we observe that the barren land surface doubled compared to the period before. This conclusion, demonstrates once again the destructive long term effects of a disaster of such magnitude. The newly re-categorised bare land and grassland make up for the loss in built-up area, forested and fertile lands. Moreover, the small decrease in water area could also be linked with the alluvions brought by the giants waves to slightly extend the shore.

A hedonic approach to risk and wellbeing

Data preparation and processing:

Rather than relying on hypothetical scenarios, the hedonic model has the advantage of relying on actual population economic preferences to infer the societal value a population holds for a particular environmental good. This technique is informative not only in crisis situations, where extreme environmental damage but it can also be employed in more subtler cases of land degradation due to pollution, for instance. The model is based on the Coase theorem, proposed around 1960’s by the American economist with the same name, stating that when faced with market inefficiencies, private citizens are able to negotiate a mutually beneficial and socially desirable solution as long as there are no costs associated with the negotiation process (Coase, 1960, pp. 1-40).

Bottom line, the model aims to illustrate how risky an area is perceived by a population, according to the fluctuations in the property price. While the model is based on strong assumptions, there is plenty of historical evidence to support its usefulness as a proxy analysis. We are aware of the fact that there are many other factors besides the occurrence of a disaster that influence the real estate price in a region, including macro-economic fluctuations of stock markets, for example, and a full fledged hedonic model requires the use of regression analysis to control for these other factors. However, mapping the price change before and after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami provides us with an informative overview of how risky the Japanese found the coastal area one year before and after the disastrous event.

For this analysis we make use of free yearly datasets documenting the property price in the entire archipelago, provided by the NLNI (n.d.). First of all, we clipped the layers describing the prices in both years to match the aforementioned coastline buffer. Then, we used the intersection tool in QGIS to identify all the common points from both years, as the NLNI methodology uses roughly the same sample of properties for each year. To observe the increase/decrease in property price in 2012 compared to 2011, we split the newly intersected layer back into two layers, comprising the difference in real estate values when 2011 prices were higher than 2012 prices and vice versa. The map below shows the plotted results:

Figure 13: Map of property price change in 2012 relative to 2011

Interpretation of results:

As it can be observed, there is an overwhelming decreasing trend in property prices across the entire nation. As a rough conclusion, this would mean that people find living on the sea as generally riskier than a year before the disaster. It is more interesting to find the opposite, that is, the area where property prices went up. These tendencies can be observed mainly around the three megacities described before, Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, especially the suburban and the adjacent rural areas. A surprising addition to these is the Sendai area; while the three megacities were not affected by the tsunami and the victims and injuries in those areas were predominantly caused by the earthquake, Sendai area, on the other hand, was heavily affected by the waves. Looking into the literature trying to explain this population preference for an area already proved to be very susceptible to be negatively impacted by tsunami, as suggested by the property price increase, we identify a general scenario as an explanation:

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, thousands of people were displaced from their homes by and many remained in temporary housing for a prolonged period of time. According to realestate.co.jp (“Tohoku residential property prices,” 2016), five years after the earthquake, about 230,000 people were still displaced, an overwhelming majority of these from the prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima. Many of the displaced people naturally prefer to reinvest their savings and insurance premiums from the destroyed homes into new residences. For the areas that escaped the inundation, this is a window of opportunity for land owners. In addition to these, there is also a certain number of property developers that anticipate future redevelopment of the unaffected areas.

As a result, people start to migrate massively from heavily hit communities to the safer regions nearby. Sendai is an attractive place to relocate, as the largest Japanese city north of Tokyo. Realestate.co.jp observes that the average asking price for condo in Sendai, was about 28,400,000 JPY (about 236,000 USD), compared to the average price of a second-hand condo in Greater Tokyo of about 27,980,000 JPY (“Tohoku Residential Property Prices,” 2016). In Ishinomaki, a fast growing suburb of Sendai a 10,000sqm residential subdivision with 60 blocks of land that had remained unsold for the past 6 years was completely sold out within a short time since the March 11 earthquake, according to Japan Property Central (“Property values rising in Tsunami affected areas,” 2011). The same publication also notes that the price of 1 sqm of land before the disaster was 45,400 JPY and since the disaster, prices have jumped between to 60,000 – 75,000 JPY/sqm, an increase of 30 – 65%.

The property price around the suburbs of larger unaffected cities in the tsunami hit area, surged at the expense of a massive drop in other regions. This finding further feeds on the aforementioned findings about areas prone to present economic discrepancies among the citizens. Thus, a primary conclusion that we can draw from this analysis is that the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami exacerbated the inter- and intra-regional inequality, which further leads to increased vulnerability, as observed by the IPCC framework for risk analysis.

Behavioural insights

Cultural specificity

Trying to characterise a certain culture using personal traits to confine it to a certain pattern of behaviour, requires accepting a sometimes excessive degree of generalisation. The process of exaggerating certain social features while minimising others produces some sort of caricature-like depictions, more often than not blamed for promoting an exceptionalist outlook of a certain nation-state or ethnicity. However, it has not always been the case that this process was publicly condemned/condemnable, as many authors were encouraged to identify traits of national specificity within their own country or even for foreign ones, with the purpose of illustrating a cohesive cultural identity. Fortunately enough for us, we do not need to venture in this overly sensitive process of creating a cultural portrait, as the U.S. and Japan are two of the nations where respectable anthropologists have been encouraged to engage in this sort of sociological research in a manner as objective as possible, enjoying relatively wide public acceptance and even appraisal, even after the introduction of the notion of ‘political correctness.’

The Japanese self

In Japan, the term Nihonjinron (日本人論: literally translated as theories about the Japanese people) represents a corpus of texts that present theories from various domains with the purpose of supporting the uniqueness of Japan as a nation-state and of promoting a Japanese cultural identity by emphasising the cultural differences between Japan and other cultures (Befu & Manabe, 1990, pp. 124-130). The major theses proposed by such Nihonjinron authors are presented in this chapter. It is worth noting that these concepts have been adopted as analysis lenses in the field of cultural studies, becoming, in this way, key heuristics in understanding the Japanese mentality.

Firstly, the hierarchical structure of the Japanese society has been long analysed and considered a defining element of the culture in the archipelago, both by Japanese and Western specialists. One of the most reputable Japanese social anthropologists, Chie Nakane, in his study Japanese Society, from as early as 1970, attempts to pinpoint the very social trait that defines the Japanese and, in this sense, he describes the Japanese society as a vertical society, a hierarchy of roles, where human interaction is shaped around responsibilities and obligations. In any society, age, gender, status, occupation, experiences and other social factors are important in determining the interaction between people, but the relationship between individuals based on these factors does not prevent the development of close human ties. Neo-Confucianism has provided the guiding principles for social interaction for centuries, and the hierarchical dependences between subject–ruler, son–father, junior–elder and woman–man are still shaping the Japanese society today. The only relationship of equality, according to Confucianism, is among friends.

Through the lenses of sociolinguistics, we can argue that the high group – high grid typology is inherent to the Japanese self, and conserved through the language. First of all, behavioural adjustment according to the social context is not uncommon; for instance, a company under the control of the parent company is called a ‘child’ company and an influential political figure is called ‘teacher’ by a supporter (Kodansha International, 1996, p.76). Moreover, in Japanese this behavioural change is linguistically explicitated. The language reflects the highly important aspect of group identity in the society through its highly intricate honorific speech, with clear grammatical marks for disparity or similarity in social status. The switch between respectful to humble formality levels goes down to the micro-level, honorifics being regularly used even among members of the same family.

Another key concept, the uchi-soto dichotomy has been theoreticised by another renowned Japanese anthropologist, Takie Sugiyama Lebra, who, in his 1976 work, Japanese Patterns of Behavior, argues that the in-group vs. out-group distinction stays at the core of power relations in the Japanese society. These concepts indicate the characteristics of the Japanese way of thinking about interpersonal relationships. In this sense, uchi refers to the in-group, the familiar environment (e.g. family, classmates, peers), while soto refers to the outside, the otherness (e.g. customers, officials, superiors). The uchi and soto groups depend on each individual and they often overlap; for example, an employee typically considers their bosses as an out-group, but, when the company meets a client or a foreign delegation, the employee will see the boss as an in-group. This shift in perception is externalised by switching between rigid formality levels of the speech, according to the social context. This duality is used in many ways in everyday life and is the basis for determining how to treat others. All the other key elements of Nihonjinron theories ultimately rely on the idea of distinguishing between in-group people and outsiders.

Building upon the previous studies of Lebra about uchi vs. soto, the Japanese psychoanalyst and academic, Takeo Doi (1986), puts forward the honne–tatemae dichotomy, in his attempt to bridge the social power structures with the linguistic features. The concept changes the focus to the personal level, analysing the inner psychological resorts of the individual when one needs to adapts to a broader societal context. Honne refers to one’s true feelings and beliefs, while tatemae is a public image one puts on in society, a sort of mask. The tatemae behaviour, while sometimes in contradiction with the honne and, when confronted with these concepts, westerners tend to misjudge the Japanese way of interaction, labelling it as double-face, a type of behaviour highly discouraged in Western cultures. However, from a Japanese perspective, it is preferable to preserve the general harmony and the well-functioning of the vertical society, instead of insisting to present one’s own strong opinions. As mentioned before, this dual concept is inseparable from the uchi-soto dichotomy. While honne, or the true feelings are frequently apparent in uchi, or intimate in-groups, tatemae is always used for interactions with out-groups.

Figure 14: Schematic representation of core concepts characteristic for the Japanese mindset

The figure above describes a simplified representation of how these three core concepts feed into each other. Once again, these have long been identified as being very representative for the wide Japanese society and represent a strong argument for the rigid hierarchical organisation of society, which feeds into itself, in a self-sustainable circle.

The American self

When it comes to the American mentality, although generalisations are difficult to make, as in the case of Japan, anthropologists have drawn parallels between the two cultures for a relatively long time already. The two have often been presented as opposing mentalities, particularly the Japanese being presented as a collectivist society, as compared to the highly individualistic American one (see Benedict, 1946 and Doi, 1986). The Dutch social psychologist, Geert Hofstede, developed a cultural dimensions theoretical model (1980) as a basis for cross-cultural comparisons on different criteria. The U.S. is regarded as a highly individualistic society, scoring 91/100 on the individualism scale, as opposed to the 46/100 Japanese score.

The renowned American scholar in political sociology of the 20th century, Seymour Martin Lipset, in his 1997 work American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, presents individualism as the core characteristic of the American spirit, in an academic endeavour similar to that of the Nihonjinron authors.

America continues to be qualitatively different from other advanced industrial nations. It is the most religious, optimistic, patriotic, rights-oriented, and individualistic. With respect to crime, it still has the highest rates; with respect to incarceration, it has the most people locked up in jail. […] It also has close to the lowest percentage of the eligible electorate voting, but the highest rate of participation in voluntary organizations. […] It is the leader in upward mobility into professional and other high-status and elite occupations, but the least egalitarian among developed nations with respect to income distribution, at the bottom as a provider of welfare benefits, the lowest in savings, the least taxed, close to the top in terms of commitment to work rather than leisure (Lipset, 1997, p. 9).

The argumentation for this difference can be made, again, through the lenses of cultural studies. If we go back to the very origins of the American society as we know it today, it is imperious that we bring into discussion the Protestant ethic brought over by the first European settlers in the Plymouth and Virginia colonies. The Protestant spirit lays at the foundation of the newly formed American civilisation which emphasises hard work and success through one’s own forces. These core values are also the driving force behind the American Revolution and are reflected in the American Creed as it was formulated by Thomas Jefferson (Huntington, 2004). Huntington describes the key elements of the American Creed, as it described the 18th century newly formed nation to be “the English language; Christianity; religious commitment; English concepts of the rule of law, responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals; and the dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and duty to try to create a heaven on earth” (pp. xv-xvi).

Possibly the most faithful embodiment of self-felt American exceptionalism constructed upon the nation’s Protestant origins, is the concept of Manifest Destiny. Manifest destiny can be understood as the belief that the first European settlers in North America had the divine mission to conquer the new territories and to establish a new world order. Although many definitions of manifest destiny exist, three core pillars characterise it: the special virtues of the American settlers, their mission to spread these virtues through their institutions and the divine predestination to accomplish this mission (Miller, 2006, p. 206 and Weeks, 1996, p. 61). The concept popularity reached its peak during the 19th century, when the Romantic movement empowered this sort of idealistic nationalism, in an attempt to create a mythical-nuanced history of the still newly formed American nation, as an effort to definitively break away from the shadow of their European past.

Once the broad understanding of either culture’s specificity, we can further bring the discussion back to Operation Tomodachi, more precisely to the very foundation of it. The name choice of the military intervention, the Operation Tomodachi or Operation Friends, albeit apparently a minor detail in the economy of the huge deployment of resources, might have influenced the manner in which the Japanese and the American side communicated with each other. By setting the framing of the expected give and take during the military operations, the initiators should have been aware of the fact that the concept of friendship is perceived differently in the two cultures and this could have considerably gripped the smooth decision making process. While the US party envisioned a relationship of mutual respect where both sides are on a par in terms of leadership, a relationship of togetherness and close involvement in the issue, it involuntarily tapped into a very specific type of human interaction in the Japanese view. As shown earlier, friendship is only a very specific occurrence in the Japanese society, where people tend to be more reserved about when and where to open up to friends.

The core notion of an army or military structure is based upon a solid assumption of deeply solidified roles taken by the members forming it. Military organisations are, thus, perfect embodiments of the hierarchic type of society described by the group-grid framework. The military structure is very stable and self-sustainable, once all its components and sub-divisions work in an integrated top-down manner. However, interactions tend to complicate when two similarly rigid hierarchies are forced to interact with each other, as in the case of Operation Tomodachi. It is, therefore, understandable that difficulties arose when the two military forces, although being strategic partners for a long time, had to accommodate with each other in a very time limited situation and without any substantial experience in such a tough scenario. The name choice of Operation Friends did not help, we argue, make this interaction any smoother, by suggesting an equalitarian time of interaction, unspecific to the inner values of a conservative hierarchy on the one hand, and also with a different meaning for each of the two sides, on the other.

Fast thinking in difficult situations

While we saw that the Japanese and the American cultural identities present opposing features, this only applies to the hypothetical everyman of either society. However, shifting the focal point to the military structure, the army is by definition characterised by a strongly enforced and rigid hierarchical order.

Acute stress makes people more prone to resort to heuristics when force to make tough and fast decisions. These heuristics engage the system 1 of thinking in the acceptance of Tversky and Kahneman and, although time efficient, they are prone to errors, which, in turn, can result in disadvantageous effects. Many top-down directives in a crisis situation can have undesirable consequences as a result, as minute details can unravel into the rescue or loss of many lives and valuable assets.

Our analysis of the heuristics, biases and the resulting effects are observed in the context of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, therefore, the results apply primarily to the Japanese civilian population caught in the midst of the catastrophe. In addition, they occasionally apply to the military decision makers of the two cooperating military forces.

Table 8: List of a series of heuristics and the resulting biases and effects during Operation Tomodachi

Heuristics

Representativeness heuristic is a mental shortcut investigated by Kahneman and Tversky (1972) and is a quick decision making method in which people form their judgements according to the similarity between a subject and a larger prototype. Oftentimes, people inaccurately predict the likelihood of an event to happen by basing their judgement on how representative the features are. This is the reason behind people denying climate change effects after a freezing winter. In the case of Japan in March 2011, assuming generalisations on how the U.S. military or the Japanese forces and civil population react, might prove a useful rule of thumb in critical situations when you need to engage efficiently with large masses of people. However, this can further result in a series of biases that impair our judgement.

Availability heuristic is another general purpose rule of thumb for decision making, according to which, in a stressful situation, the most important and immediate examples come to mind more easily as solutions, at the expense of other alternatives that may be more suited for the situation at hand. Tversky and Kahneman (1974) conducted research in this area as well and they give the example of investors that may rely of information in the recent news when appreciating the value of an investment, overlooking other relevant data. A highly stressful situation, such as the 2011 cascading disaster, prompts us to rely more often on these heuristics, but also to narrow our palette of representative events that come to mind, thus making us to become more biased and our decisions more fallible.

Biases

Groupthink is a psychological reaction of a population that tends to make irrational decisions for the sake of preserving the general harmony. In more severe instances, groupthink can reinforce common values when the group identity is perceived as being under threat, leading even to nationalistic behaviour. As we described in the section dealing with the cultural specificity, the Japanese society is centred on public harmony; linking this fact with the group-grid typology put forth by Douglas and Wildavsky, in a rigid hierarchical society everyone tends to play their role predictably, in order to keep the social order working smoothly. This, however, can lead to an increased level of redundant bureaucracy or acting upon decisions against our personal belief. This aspect is tightly conserved in the Japanese society, by the permanent exchange between the aforementioned honne and tatemae, according to the in-group/out-group social context.

Social desirability is the tendency, according to Fisher (1993), of people to respond inaccurately when surveyed on sensitive topics, in order to reflect an ideal or at least better image of themselves. This is linked to the same resorts as groupthink, which is the desire to preserve the general harmony. Also a response to the representativeness heuristic, this bias prompts the subject to conform to a prototype agreed upon by the group. Social desirability, seen more broadly as conformity to the rules, can prove very efficient in a military organisation, such as the U.S. military and the JSDF, where the personnel is expected to fully obey the instructions received. However, this can prove dangerously detrimental in crisis situations when people face harsh conditions and oftentimes biased top-down decisions.

Authority bias refers to the attribution of greater expertise to the opinion of an authority figure. Due to the legitimacy attributed to an authority figure, the individual may tend to question less or to analyse more superficially a top-down instruction, deeming the decision more valuable that it often is. Authority bias can be regarded as a result of the availability heuristic, especially in risky situations when we are inclined to look for higher authority for guidance. In the context of Operation Tomodachi, the American-Japanese interaction was very unusual: on the one hand, the Japanese perceive the U.S. as a military authority that systematically provides logistics and training for the Japanese Defense Forces personnel and were expecting some more firm command and control behaviour, while on the other hand there is the U.S. side, a strategic partner in a host country, which, unlike the majority of cases, is a highly advanced developed nation with a clear structure and capabilities on its own. Either party was maybe too cautious to take the lead, at least in a share of missions, as both were trying to preserve an egalitarian friendly relation.

Effects

Illusion of transparency appears when people overestimate how well their personal mental process is understood by others. Also, put it differently, individuals tend to overestimate how well others perceive the contextual pressures on them and, consequently, might overlook to explain the key reasoning behind their decisions. (Fischhoff & Kadvany, 2011, p.116). When authority bias kicks in, the figure that is perceived to be in charge might assume that their intentions and overview are also apparent to the others, when this might not actually be the case. This illusion of transparency is exacerbated in the context of two different cultural mind-sets interacting with each other. Cultural differences might produce barriers in how certain procedures are understood and partners often need to provide additional explanations in unexpected situations.

False consensus effect moves beyond the illusion of transparency as people not only overestimate how well they express their intentions, but also assume that their intentions are similar to the others’. As a result of the social desirability bias, false consensus happens when the two parties attempt to preserve a smooth interaction without tackling the underlying pressing factors. This can be exemplified by the surprise the Americans had when they realised that the Japanese completely lacked any amphibious intervention vehicles. Japan, even though it is a densely populated archipelago nation, was entirely reliant on the U.S. logistics and capabilities to act in an unfamiliar environment for them.

Risk compensation is a phenomenon that happens when a subject is provided with a safety feature and, counterintuitively, they tend to assume more risks (Thompson, Thompson & Rivara, 2002). A classic example are the helmets that make skiers to behave in a more adventurous manner or the introduction of seatbelts that leads to more reckless driving habits. This effect was very prominent during Operation Tomodachi A huge debate with over a hundred lawsuits filed was the case of the U.S. personnel sent in the radioactive area after the Fukushima power-plant meltdown wearing unsafe equipment.

Possible solutions

It is often hard for members of one culture to understand another’s sacred values; however, acknowledging those values may help to avoid or resolve the hardest of conflicts, as was the WWII example when the American leadership acknowledged the role of the emperor in lessening the likelihood that the Japanese would fight to the death to save him. Thus, the involvement of specialists aware of the Japanese cultural specificity when elaborating the cooperation protocol is crucial in providing a comprehensive and effective policy. This is an aspect of which the U.S. side has been indeed aware, for example if we consider the fact that they employed liaison officers and academics such as Robert Eldridge to help drafting the protocol for Operation Tomodachi.

Communication channels need to be in place in order to ensure accurate information sharing between the two parties. The most acute and overarching problem during Operation Tomodachi was the precarious communication and the lack of secure information sharing channels. When facing a high magnitude, human made cascading disaster and you operate in a relatively new environment with a partner having a different mindset, dialogue should be paramount. Both the Japanese and the American side lacked full understanding of the other’s capabilities.

Repeated drills facilitate quick automatic reactions instead of freezing or improvising in unfamiliar surroundings. Annual U.S.-Japan joint disaster response exercises are now being conducted for a similar complex event such as 2011, this time around the Kyushu island, in the South (Aoki, 2016). Moreover, Australian forces have also been invited to get involved in a tri-party disaster relief operation conducted for a better coordination in a real life scenario.

Shifting to more divisional team structures, as opposed to function structures may be beneficial for teams operating in acutely stressful environments, as demonstrated by Alexander (2006). To be more explicit, divisional team structures emphasise a high level of individualism and self-reliance of the individual members who are part of a military hierarchical structure. Thus, individuals can react quicker and with more flexibly in disaster response than overly specialised teams where the acute stress impairs the mechanistic mindset.

Top-down decisions can be implemented more easily working with a predictable hierarchical civil society. As highlighted before, repetitive similar disaster scenarios conducted from an early age generate automated responses in crisis situations, no matter how dire. A cool headed population is an enormous advantage in a disaster scenario and the authorities should rely on their ability to bounce back.

In conclusion, Operation Tomodachi was, in general, a successful joint military intervention, which relied strongly on the flexibility and expertise of a number of key stakeholders. However, due to the unusual nature of the event, the lack of experience, cultural differences and acute stress, decision-makers oftentimes had to resort to heuristics which lead to biases in the decisions. Stress exacerbates this tendency and policy-makers need to take into account several factors and recommendations that arise as key lessons from Operation Tomodachi.

Concrete steps towards a preventive approach

After analysing the large amount of reports and articles written in the aftermath of Operation Tomodachi, both the Japanese national and regional authorities and the officials of the U.S. forces stationed in Japan agreed that capacity building between each other is a high priority measure for the prevention of reaching such a large number of casualties and destroyed homes in the case of a similar magnitude earthquake off the coasts of Japan. Involvement of the civilian population is also a requirement for ensuring the workflow smoothness.

Annual U.S.-Japan joint disaster response exercises;

As a result, it has been agreed by both sides that it is imperious to encourage the growth of a tighter bound between the sub-national authorities, even to the very local level and the U.S. military forces. In this way the deployment of the necessary military personnel can be coordinated with ease to the areas where their presence is most urgent. Consequently, the US military expressed their intention to tighten and extend this collaboration with local authorities to relief operations, as described in a Japan Times article (“U.S. forces seek closer ties,” 2013). The same article further explains how, two year after the disaster, the Shizuoka Prefectural Government and authorities from nine other smaller municipalities – some external from the prefectures of Aichi and Mie – held an official meeting with US high ranking officers, which concretised with the dispatching of prefectural officials to participate in training courses at the American bases of the Marines in Okinawa. in what was described as a model case (“U.S. forces seek closer ties,” 2013).

Furthermore, in 2012, the two nations resolves to jointly conduct military drills for disaster relief scenarios and thus the Keen Sword exercise has taken place regularly ever since. In 2018, the autumn drill involved around 57,000 personnel from both sides. “Keen Sword will give U.S. and Japanese forces an opportunity to practice critical air, maritime, and amphibious capabilities essential for Japan’s defense and for regional security,” said Lieutenant General Jerry P. Martinez, commander of U.S. Forces Japan in an interview for The Diplomat (Gady, 2018).

Repetitive similar cascading disaster scenarios

5 years after Operation Tomodachi, the JSDF and the U.S. military were involved in annual joint disaster response exercises. As discussed before, the central government has since 2013 been focused on planning for another large earthquake and tsunami, this time along the Nankai Trough, which runs from Suruga Bay in Shizuoka Prefecture, near Tokyo and ends off the coast of Kyushu. Investigations of geophysical studies support the fear of the Japanese Government, as a mega-earthquake with a magnitude of above 8.0 may have catastrophic consequences, by far exceeding the ones from 11 March 2011 (Baranes, Woodruff, Loveless & Hyodo, 2018; Lee, Shimoyama & Popinet, 2015).

Indeed, if we also look at the map showing the distribution of active nuclear facilities in Figure 7, we observe that Kyushu is the main island which now concentrates the most active facilities. Although located in the area with the most intense volcanic activity in Japan, this region is less likely to be hit by large tsunami, compared to the north-eastern Tohoku region. Moreover, Sasebo, in the prefecture of Nagasaki, hosts one of the largest U.S. military bases in Japan, tasked with naval operations. The Okinawan bases are also in close reach, especially Kadena, the primary host of the U.S. Air Force.

However, although progress has been made in this direction, some experts have concerns about how quickly and smoothly a future joint disaster response would be, while politics creates its own barriers to doing more: “The U.S. armed forces have often attempted to distance themselves from this work, partly out of a sense of priorities in terms of training time and the likelihood of deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., but also partly out of a different sense of mission and identity to the JSDF,” says Garren Mulloy, associate professor at Daito Bunka University and expert in JSDF, as cited by Japan Times (Johnston, 2016).

Involvement of 3rd parties: U.S.-Japan-Australia drills

After the U.S., the second major contributor to the disaster relief efforts during the 2011 Great East Japan disaster was Australia. The Australian side mainly involved in providing C-17 aircraft to facilitate the transportation of supplies, JSDF personnel (2015, p.55). However, Japan, Australia and the U.S. have a well-established tri-nation military partnership, commonly referred to as the Trilateral Security Dialogue (TSD) (Tow, 2008, pp. 2-11). In the post-2011, Japanese officials were well aware of the need for improvements in disaster relief preparedness and the benefit of strengthening the ties with regional partners.

However, not everyone sees in such positive terms the military closeness between the TSD states and, as Zhu Feng states, “the TSD is in effect an important effort to counterbalance China’s rise…without the specter of a rising China, Washington, Tokyo, and Canberra would not have begun intensifying defense cooperation” (Tow, 2015, pp. 41-49). By adopting a stronger approach to disaster relief and humanitarian aid operations, the TSD would arguably be able to kill two birds with one stone: one the one hand it could increase the three states’ interaction capacity, while also promoting a non-conflictual image of their joint efforts to other external partners, such as China (Tow, 2015; Endall, 2015).

The three nations were also involved in a large scale exercise held in 2014, called Michinoku Alert, around the Sendai area and following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake scenario, similar to the 2011 one. The purpose of the drill was to improve the response capacity of the JSDF, while contributing, in the same time, to establishing the primary protocol for the joint collaboration between the JSDF, the USFJ and the Australian forces (MoD, 2014, p. 7).

Involvement of specialists aware of the Japanese culture in elaborating the protocol

The United States have always been aware of the fact that it is crucial to understand the mentality of your partner/opponent, in a military engagement, in order to be able to successfully interact and predict their actions. Every work about U.S.-Japan relations should pay tribute to the immense influence that Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) had on the relation between the two countries in the post-war period. Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was a cultural anthropologist commissioned by the U.S. Office of War Information in 1945 to write a report on the Japanese society with the purpose of understanding and predicting the behaviour of the greatest U.S. enemy in the Pacific at that time. Alexander Stille notes in an article for New York Times the harsh conditions for Benedict to write such an analysis in wartime, with no virtual possibility to go to Japan to conduct her field research (Stille, 2003). Even so, Benedict completed the “Japanese Behavior Patterns” in less than three months by conducting interviews with Japanese-American citizens within the U.S., Stille further notes. The report was later on published under the name of The Chrysanthemum and the Sword and became an instant best seller, being adopted not only as the leading work by the experts in cultural studies on Japanese society, but also becoming highly popular among the U.S. occupation troops stationed in Japan immediately after the capitulation.

Going back to the case of Operation Tomodachi, Dr. Robert Eldridge was a liaison officer at the BCAT established in Sendai. He was developing a cooperation plan between the two military forces in the case of a natural disaster, before the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami happened, foreseeing the lack of jointness and preparedness of the two side in conducting disaster relief operations. Being an experienced scholar in international relations and an associate professor at Osaka University, Eldridge has lived in Japan since the late 1990’s. What Benedict would have most benefited from during her time was the direct experience of the Japanese society; Robert Eldridge has had this privilege and is deeply familiarised with the social context of the society, as well as with the organisational system of both the JSDF and the U.S. Marine Corps in Japan, also previously working for the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa as a political adviser. Thus, he was a key figure in providing the right linkage between the two disconnected parties. With an extensive experience of more than 30 years already, Dr. Eldridge demonstrated that understanding the Japanese behaviour requires a lot of time and dedication on the one hand and that it is extremely useful in unthinkably severe crises such as March 11, 2011.

Therefore, we can conclude that behavioural insights can prove detrimental in crisis situations when understanding the mental works of your counterpart improves a smoother cooperation. By being aware of the cultural specificity of a certain population with which one interacts, the use of heuristics is less likely to produce biases that negatively impact crucial decision making processes. When the stakes are high in heavily time constrained situations Kahneman’s system 1 fast thinking is more likely to produce the desired results by making use of automated recollection of memories and knowledge. Regardless of how severe the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami was, it may be considered a stretch to compare the stress the stakeholders were subjected to with the period at the end of WWII. However, the point we seek to get across is that encouraging the efforts of academics – such as Ruth Benedict and, leaping through time, of Robert Eldridge and other liaison officers – to accommodate decision making processes in the context of a foreign culture proves to pay off immensely when many lives are at stake in a crisis situation. Such anthropological efforts are a stepping stone in the course of achieving a preventive approach to disaster risk reduction, the benefit of which cannot and should not be overlooked.

Opportunities for future research

The present study and findings represent an innovative approach to disaster risk analysis, by employing the lenses of behavioural economics to explain the causes for possibly inadequate decision making processes during Operation Tomodachi. Restating our main purpose, the research seeks to promote a paradigm shift even within the highly conservative military structures, from a responsive to a preventive approach, which presupposes being aware of the cultural and psychosocial factors that influence behaviour within a population. We believe that this represents an excellent starting point for other focused studies in this direction.

One study opportunity that we see arising would consist of a research on population perception. We are inclined to believe that different typologies of the group-grid model in Japan may share significantly different degrees of trust towards nuclear energy, for instance, as various studies tend to indicate (Rochlin & von Meier, 1994; van de Graaff, 2016). This, however, requires a considerable amount of time and resources to obtain a representative sample for each typology. Psychological inferences are difficult to generalise and are subject to change with every generation. Thus, given the opportunity, large scale interviews with different social categories within the Japanese society can help reveal how some typologies might present more resilience when confronted with acute stress.

The analysis based on the hedonic model provides valuable insights into possible sources of discrepancies between and within communities, causes of structural inequality. The proposed scenarios are a useful basis to develop a fully fledged hedonic regression model. The economic choices of the population reveal preferences and aversion, uncovering information on behaviours deemed risky by the large public. To solidify the conclusions drawn in the case of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, we suggest, as a concrete first step in this direction, obtaining land price data on a longer period of time around the reference point. Thus, with additional data, the model can be extended from a before-after analysis to an extended time series.

The geospatial analysis techniques are a high-potential tool for establishing the link between the technical and the social approaches to risk assessment. The NLNI database offers detailed tsunami scenario models for some parts of the archipelago. However, there are some key areas both along the Sanriku coast where the 2011 tsunami had the most intense impact, as well as along the Nankai Trough, which are either unmapped or not publicly available. By using geospatial interpolation techniques, such as kriging, we desire to extend the analysis to the Nankai trough, all the more given the fact that it is a very mixed region, where large cities such as Osaka, Kobe or Hiroshima intersect with sparsely populated, predominantly agriculture-oriented rural areas, especially around the island of Shikoku or the western part of Kyushu.

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