How can the human dimensions of disaster impacts be more accurately captured and represented in the analysis, modeling and simulation of disasters?
We have to systematically dissolve the elements and factors of disasters into (1) Hazard Exposure and (2) Vulnerability that has multi sectoral attributions such as social; economic; physical; institutional; cultural and environmental. To capture the human disaster impacts; we have to carefully analyze both (1) Hazard Exposure and (2) Vulnerability that have direct and indirect impacts on humans with scientific providence and evidence. To understand the (1) Hazard Exposure; we have to grasp the intensity of the physical shocks and their geographical range of effects. And; to understand the human disaster impacts from such shocks; we have to analyze how humans are affected by such physical shocks in the diverse vulnerability in social; economic; physical institutional; cultural and environmental aspects. In this analysis; we have to take into account not only the initial primary impacts; but also the secondary and tertiary impacts to humans. Therefore; we have to systematically dissolve the disaster impacts into the multidimensional and multi-stage elements and effects.
What type of data and supporting research infrastructure would be necessary to enable novel, transdisciplinary approaches to answering these and other human-centered disaster questions?
The difficulty in capturing the human impacts is in that objects are so diversified and cannot be easily represented by statistical sampling. We have to carefully grasp even the minorities with high vulnerability and disadvantages. In this backdrop; we have to mobilize the technologies such as applications on the smartphones so that enables the mass scale individual data collection. Respondents of such applications would be accumulated in the database; and the analyzed data in a variety of aspects would more correctly explicitly tell us the real impacts of the disasters.
In what ways can US-Japan collaborations advance these questions in new and important ways?
Japan should mobilize its ample knowledge and expertise in the Hazard Exposure analysis aspects with engineering scientific evidence; while the US should provide its rich advanced methodologies and theories in statistical and behavioral economics.