Framework for Disaster Management: Planning and Reality

This article presents reflections on the framework for disaster management in Japan, based on the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Working through several identified stages of disaster response management, it draws distinctions between the natural disaster component of the disaster (earthquake and tsunami) and the man-made disaster component (nuclear power plant accident). Problems in connecting planning for disaster and the reality in disaster management are discussed, and the article suggests some lessons that might be drawn in moving the study of public management and public policy towards a better understanding of the needs of disaster management today and in the future.