Objectives: The Tohoku disaster(s) is an event almost without parallels in disaster history. Four specific features make it a very unique disaster: severity and pervasiveness of the trigger and cascading disasters, geographic coverage, and persistence over time of the nuclear threat. As a result of these factors the disaster and its response offer important lessons of benefit to future relief operations. In this context, the main objectives of the project are: (1) to study the impacts on the humanitarian logistic response produced by the cascading disasters that impacted Tohoku; (2) to study how the post-disaster humanitarian logistic (PD-HL) system responded to the disasters; (3) to study how the persistent nuclear threat impacted the overall PD-HL effort; (4) to identify a preliminary topology and features of the various PD-HL structures that emerged in the response; (5) to gather insight into their level of effectiveness, positive and negative characteristics, manpower provided, coverage and extent of their operations; (5) to gather data about the flows of critical / non-critical supplies, and their dynamic patterns over time; (6) to gather data about the impact of preexisting conditions on post-disaster relief capacity; and, (7) to document lessons learned, both positive and negative.
Intellectual merit and broader impacts: The research to be conducted is important to the nascent field of PD-HL and disaster research because it will provide much needed evidence-based insight into actual/emerging PD-HL practices, and lessons both positive and negative that could benefit future relief operations. In this context, it is important to highlight that the realities of PD-HL response are not well understood by the disaster research community at large. This is because of: (1) the relatively low occurrence of disasters; (2) the extremely small size of the professional and research PD-HL communities; and (3) the ephemeral nature of the data. The project will provide the first systemic characterization of the PD-HL process that emerged after cascading disasters with a persistent nuclear threat. The findings produced by such characterization would: (1) enhance theoretical understandings of organizations and organizing in disaster environments; and (2) set the stage for advanced modeling of these approaches. The research will: (1) promote multidisciplinary collaboration on humanitarian logistics research; (2) integrate students to a multidisciplinary and international research process, with a particular emphasis on underrepresented students; (3) generate findings that will be integrated into disaster and logistics courses; (4) generate findings with applied benefits that will be broadly disseminated to organizations engaged in humanitarian logistics, including stakeholders in Japan.
This project describes the findings from the field work and research conducted by the team on post-disaster humanitarian logistics (PD-HL) practices after the 2011 Tohoku Disasters. The data were collected using a multi-prong approach based on in depth interviews with participants in the relief efforts, assembly of a comprehensive database of news articles and reports, and the creation of a timeline of relevant events. The interviews, conducted during several trips to the area, were with the Tohoku Regional Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism (MLIT); the prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima; the cities of Ishinomaki and Kesennuma, and three large private companies (i.e., Yamato, Sagawa, and AEON), that were involved in the response. In parallel to the fieldwork and interviews, immediately after the onset of the disaster, a vigorous and comprehensive media focused data collection program was activated. The massive amount of the data collected through these means was synthesized to help develop timelines of the key events, and a basic script that describes how the response evolved. The research lead to a number of important conclusions that could benefit future disaster response: 1) disaster plans prepared by the cities and prefectures were quickly abandoned; 2) mechanisms were lacking for the proper integration of the private sector and other stakeholders into the PD-HL response; 3) the complexity and magnitude of the PD-HL challenge were vastly underestimated; 4) post disaster behaviors such as convergence of non/low-priority supplies and precautionary / opportunistic buying complicated the response; and 5) construction operations performed an outstanding job in restoring access to the disaster area. These findings are consistent with what was observed after other catastrophic events, such as Katrina and Haiti, clearly suggesting that the policy recommendations made are robust. Among the similarities it is important to highlight: the need to bring large amounts of supplies from the outside of the impacted area to satisfy the needs of survivors and the response process; the importance of prepositioning critical supplies; the magnitude and complexity of the PD-HL challenge, and particularly of the local distribution; the necessity to integrate all segments of Society (i.e., the civic society, military, public sector, the various strata of the private sector) to ensure the most efficient response permitted by the circumstances; and the need to proactively manage and control the flows of non/low/high priority supplies that accompany large disasters. Based on these findings, the team put forward seven policy recommendations: (1) integrate civic society in disaster preparation and response efforts; (2) design plans for a wide range of events ranging from small disaster to catastrophic events; (3) design disaster plans for easy integration of outside help by sub-diving potential tasks and striving to standardize the assignments thru training; (4) train potential participants in PD-HL activities and procedures; (5) preposition critical supplies and equipment; (6) control material convergence and precautionary/opportunistic buying; and, (7) foster the development of the supporting technologies and systems. The knowledge derived from this study will enable disaster responders to develop adequate procedures for responding to catastrophic events.
