Tokyo Tops Disaster Risk List

[Captain Japan]

Tokyo, San Francisco Top Munich Re Disaster Risk List
Bloomberg

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Tokyo and San Francisco are the cities facing the biggest damage potential from natural disasters such as earthquakes, said Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer.

They are followed by Los Angeles, Osaka, Miami, New York and Hong Kong, said board member Stefan Heyd during a press conference in Munich today on so-called megacities and related risks. Megacities are metropolitan areas with more than 10 million people.

The earthquake that hit Kobe in Japan in 1995 killed more than 6,000 people and caused damages exceeding $100 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster to date, Munich Re said. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake killed 3,000 people. Munich Re warned that big cities pose an increasing challenge for the industry because they often accumulate large amounts of insurance policies...the rest...

[Captain Japan]

Planners Ferret Out Urban Risks
Wired News

Who would have guessed that shopping in an underground Tokyo mall during a heavy rainfall could be classified as a risky activity?

That will be one of the more surprising topics at next week's World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan. While the conference marks the 10th anniversary of the city's devastating $100 billion earthquake, last month's Indian Ocean tsunami will also be a prominent topic. However, much of the meeting will be devoted to large cities' vulnerability to natural disasters.

One of cities' hidden vulnerabilities is their extensive underground subways, malls, parking facilities and public utilities, said Srikantha Herath of United Nations University. Much of Tokyo, for example, is 18 feet below sea level. Its extensive underground areas have flooded 17 times in a two-year span as a result of storms and heavy rains, with some loss of life, said Herath. "Despite extensive precautions, there's nowhere for the water to go underground."

[Captain Japan]

Tokyo 'the next natural disaster flashpoint'
Daily Telegraph

German reinsurer Munich Re will today issue a report pinpointing Tokyo as the world's next natural disaster flashpoint that could plunge the world into global recession.
...snip...
"Today, a severe earthquake in the Tokyo-Yokohama conurbation would result in hundreds of thousands of fatalities, damage running into trillions of dollars, and global economic repercussions," says the report, entitled Mega-cities - Megarisks: Trends and challenges for insurance and risk management.

Munich Re said that such a catastrophe could be equal to if not double that suffered in 1923. A hit would not only devastate Japan but, as the centre of the globe's second-biggest economy by far, a crippled Tokyo could plunge the world's markets into an abyss.

Tokyo is particularly vulnerable, the report says, because of the area's history of earthquakes and its poor preparedness.

[Captain Japan]

Research to ameliorate disaster
Japan Times Editorial

Jan. 17 marks the 10th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, which took the lives of more than 6,400 people. In the past decade, Japan's earthquake countermeasures have changed enormously. Its earthquake observation system has become more sophisticated. Together with general observation and research, studies have made progress in understanding the active faults that cause inland underground earthquakes.

The vicious power of an inland underground earthquake demonstrated itself once again in October's Niigata-Chuetsu Earthquake. Even when the total energy released is not so large, an earthquake of this type can cause violent jolting in a limited area. Since 2000 the government's Earthquake Research Committee has been calculating the long-term probability of an earthquake occurring in the 98 inland active fault zones of Japan. By the end of 2004 it had completed evaluation of 73 locations. At the same time, the committee has evaluated the probability of an undersea earthquake occurring in places such as off the Sanriku coast, the Boso Peninsula, and the Tonankai and Nankai sea areas.
...snip...
In the last half century, Japanese society has achieved a high level of industrialization, with much of the population concentrated in urban areas. If adequate earthquake countermeasures are not taken for regions such as Tokai and Tonankai-Nankai, a strong quake could be devastating. The results of earthquake research, which Japan has been conducting with perhaps the world's most dense observation network, must be put to use in reducing the scale of earthquake disasters....the rest...

All the research in the world isn't going to do a thing until preventative measures as far as construction are implemented and enforced. And who is going to do that?

[AssKissinger]

Hit It Girls

Major quake in Tokyo would kill 13,000, cause 1.1 trl dlr damages: study