Making schools resilient at scale: the case of Japan

This document provides a review of Japan’s Program for Earthquake-Resistant School Buildings. Japan’s ongoing efforts to mitigate earthquake risk and improve the seismic safety of schools involve learning from the experience of earthquakes, advancing engineering knowledge and technology, accumulating data, and exercising the political will to pass relevant legislation and secure funding. Lessons and knowledge shared from Japan should prove useful to countries that are considering embarking on their own retrofitting programs.

Japan’s notable achievements under this program suggest certain lessons for developing countries seeking to improve the seismic safety of their schools. Lessons on policy development, program design, and program implementation are summarized below.

• Building on experiences from previous disaster events can provide momentum to accelerate school retrofitting;
• Information disclosure is key to raising public awareness and encouraging program implementers;
• The roles and functions of schools in disaster management must be clear to determine the retrofitting and improvements necessary for school facilities;
• Data play a powerful role in the design and the promotion of the seismic retrofitting program;
• Comprehensive and flexible program development with clear priorities and targets is important;
• The advancement of engineering research should serve as a basis to develop a school retrofitting program;
• The ready availability of engineers to design and implement the program better ensures effective and efficient school seismic retrofitting;
• Proactive support by the national government that considers the capacity of program implementers is critical to the program’s success; and
• Combining seismic retrofitting with other facility improvement is cost-efficient.