White paper on disaster management in Japan 2011 - executive summary

This year, the Great East Japan Earthquake is the focus of the Japan Cabinet Office white paper. This white paper shows the overview of the disaster and its countermeasures from various angles, summarizing them briefly, but widely. Though an accurate overall assessment of the extremely severe damage resulting from the Great East Japan Earthquake has not yet been figured out, this white paper covers the current situation (as of the end of May 2011) and the responses to it to date.

It consists of three parts. Part 1, "The Great East Japan Earthquake," chapter one, presents an overview of the earthquake and tsunami, and countermeasures for them; chapter two shows the overview of the nuclear disaster and its countermeasures. Part 2 summarizes "Major Disasters Since 2010 and the Countermeasures for Them." Part 3 summarized "Overview of Measures Taken on Disaster Management in 2009 and Plans for Disaster Management in 2011."

Note: It had been almost four months since the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred at the time of this publication. Recovery operations are still ongoing and the discussion for reconstruction has barely started. Full inspections of the disaster and a subsequent study of lessons learned from the disaster will be conducted more intensively in future.