Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
in the last hundred years was very good, but there were historical records of extreme
wave heights of 600 years ago and also at roughly thousand-year intervals. How
should such information be communicated? Clearly peoples' usual life span is less
than 100 years and this is therefore the natural period most people consider as a life
time event. There may be a tendency for experts to limit themselves to that period
from concern over either talking outside their audience's expectations or in trigger-
ing unnecessary worries among some. Indeed many will expect an expert to con-
centrate on the higher and more immediate risks when they are engaged in outreach
for educating citizen. On the other hand, over 1000 years or more, there might be
high chance of a much higher disaster affecting significantly vulnerable areas. Even
though the reliability of such scientific data is weaker than recent data, it might be
that citizens would want to know to avoid them misjudging the issue of tsunamis as
just a short term issue. The question is how that information should be transmitted
to potentially vulnerable populations.
14.4.2.2
Economic Valuation
The 2011 tsunami caused just over 18,000 dead or missing. Another 24,670 were in-
jured on account of this disaster. Furthermore, 1.2 million buildings were destroyed
or damaged across a wide area.It is not the largest fatality of such natural events
(the death toll from the Sumatra tsunami, and the typhoon Nargis in Myanmar were
much larger) but the Japanese damage was the highest economic cost ever recorded.
The reason was not just the high value of buildings and infrastructure in a developed
country but also because the
economic value of life
is much higher since it is related
to the income of the person affected. This introduces the extent to which economics
is applied even to life and death and can be a useful source of debate.
The World Bank estimated in March 2011 that the economic damage associated
with the eastern Japan earthquake was in the vicinity of US$ 235 billion. Actual
damage to infrastructure such as roads, railways, dams, harbours, airports, and pow-
er plants was so extensive that accurate estimates are difficult to obtain. Because of
these, accuracy matters too in addition to ethical criteria to judge in valuing human
life in terms of disaster for future sustainability.
14.4.2.3
Balancing Risks
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) as Fukushima nuclear power plant's opera-
tor announced that 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity were released from the
troubled reactors in the first few weeks of the crisis. This is more than double that
of previous estimates. The destruction of the Fukushima nuclear power station was
due to the flooding of the backup generators and could have been avoided had
the company merely shifted them from the basement to a higher level. This is so
obvious with hindsight that the question is why this was not done. The reasons
