Advance of Gross National Safety for Natural Disasters: GNS Calculation at the Municipal Level in Japan

In recent years, Japan has experienced a variety of natural disasters, which have become increasingly frequent and severe. In order to reduce the damage caused by natural disasters, it is necessary to take both hardware and software measures. Kikumoto et al. developed the first Gross National Safety index for Natural Disaster, the GNS, in 2015, in which evaluated a risk of against natural disasters can be quantitatively evaluated at prefectural level. However, there is no such general safety index at municipal level. Considering that a more detailed assessment index can help decision and policy makers facilitate implementation of more effective countermeasures, this study aims to develop a GNS for each municipality. In the municipal-version GNS, we were able to obtain more detailed information than the 2015 GNS. Since there are a lot of Disaster-prone areas in Japan but each area has suffered from different kind of Disasters, if the characteristics of the risk in each municipality can be identified from the exposure and vulnerability indices in the GNS, optimal countermeasures can be taken to reduce the damage caused by natural disasters.