Evaluating the use of earthquake scenario exercises for developing disaster management strategies

The Australasian Journal of Disaster
and Trauma Studies
ISSN:  1174-4707
Volume : 2010-2

Evaluating the use of earthquake scenario exercises
for developing disaster management strategies

Shyh-Yuan Maa, Assistant Professor, As known as Sawyer Mars, Department of Urban Planning and Disaster Management, Ming Chuan University, 5 De-Ming Rd., Kuei-shang, Taoyung County, Taiwan 333. E -mail: swyrmars@mail.mcu.edu.tw ; advisory member of the Taipei County and Kaohsiung City Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee.
Jieh-Jiuh Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Ming Chuan University, 5 De-Ming Rd., Kuei-shang, Taoyung County, Taiwan 333. E -mail: jjwang@mail.mcu.edu.tw

Shyh-Yuan Maa Assistant Professor Department of Urban Planning and Disaster Management Ming Chuan University 5 De-Ming Rd. Kuei-shang Taoyung County Taiwan 333

Jieh-Jiuh Wang Assistant Professor Department of Architecture Ming Chuan University 5 De-Ming Rd. Kuei-shang Taoyung County Taiwan 333

Abstract

With a majority of Taiwan’s population exposed to high risks associated with typhoon, flood and earthquake disasters due to its geographical location coupled with a densely-concentrated population in urban areas, devising a framework for routinely validating urban earthquake disaster management strategies has emerged as an urgent mission for Taiwan. Following the September 21st, 1999, the Chi-chi Earthquake, Taiwan began to systematically review and improve its emergency management system. However, there seems to be a lack of national and policy-oriented spearheading aimed at disaster management measures for urban earthquake disasters.

Since 2003, the National Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee , Executive Yuan , Taiwan start s to develop relevant contents and procedures for the progressive exercise design by emulating the standards of the Federal Emergency Management Administration , USA. At 2006, it started implementing four separate central government disaster scenario exercises focusing on typhoon, flood and earthquake disasters. At 2007, the NDPPC expanded this action to cover Taipei County and Taoyuan County.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the significance of reviewing earthquake disaster management strategies with respect to exercise planning and implementation processes, including applied scenarios, and it includes a review of existing pertinent plans and procedures. This article also considers how best to routinely implement yearly emergency scenarios and exercises and even an integrated exercise plan at a national level as a mechanism for routine validating urban earthquake disaster management policies.

Evaluating the use of earthquake scenario exercises
for developing disaster management strategies

Introduction

The application of scenario s to assess urban earthquake disaster management mechanisms has emerged as a vital task. Scenarios represent a decision analysis tool used to simulate the impact likely to result from actual disasters in order to devise appropriate response strategies. A host of earthquake scenario tools developed by some countries such as the United States have been gradually refined in recent years to cover cities, homes and important facilities Footnote 1 near faults.

These policy objectives cannot be realistically achieved without the efforts of government to develop routine operations. Hence, staging an exercise or drill by coordinating governmental and private organizations to explore possible problems and to review the current status of such drills and exercises has become a viable and cost-saving method for evaluating the effectiveness of the disaster management system.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the significance of reviewing earthquake disaster management strategies with respect to exercise planning and implementation processes, including applied scenarios, and it includes a review of existing pertinent plans and procedures. This article also considers how best to routinely implement yearly emergency scenarios and exercises and even an integrated exercise plan at a national level as a mechanism for routinely validating urban earthquake disaster management policies. This paper utilized participant observation to investigate the contents and procedures of four simulated exercises implemented by the National Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee (NDPPC) of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan since 2003, together with similar exercises implemented in Taipei County and Taoyuan County. This paper investigated the applied scenario, reviewed the existing plans and procedures, and discussed how the routine implementation of yearly exercises at a national level can be used to devise mechanisms for regularly validating urban earthquake disaster management strategies.

Taiwan’s experiences of practicing major earthquake disaster exercises are less. Years of 2006 and 2007 were aimed at Central Emergency Operation Center (CEOC). Year 2008, the aspects of reporting and arrangement of disaster conditions has been expanded to Taipei and Taoyuan Counties since the practice in CEOC has functioned well. There were two major planning concepts. The first, to evaluate the capabilities and structures of command and control, communication, and disaster reporting between central and local governments, the second, to facilitate local government’s capability to practice the scenario-based exercise, and to apply the concepts, procedures and measures of exercise planning and design to the governmental routine business.

The development and planning of exercise to the urban earthquake disasters

Taiwan’s emergency management system, which includes a national-level mobilization system, has generated a wealth of experience through chess game drills, such as the Wanan Exercise, that have been implemented on a yearly basis, as well as relevant exercises focusing on fire, nuclear safety and hazard material disasters. Nevertheless, given the ways in which exercise scripts are developed, the scenarios tend to be conceived in terms of a single disaster and often lack background information necessary to stage truly scientific, systematic scenarios.

Aware of this weakness, at 2003 the NDPPC has developed the contents and procedures of the Progressive Exercise Design by emulating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) standards Footnote 2. These works have been spearheaded by the National Fire Agency, the Ministry of the Interior. In light of the chronic flooding of the Keelung River in the Sijhih area, Lee et al. (2003) was undertaken that integrated SOBEK flooding estimation software and the development of a simple simulation system in order to compile a relevant response database focusing on the region’s flood-prone areas; this project resulted in a prototype for an interactive simulated exercise training system. The subsequent project of Shan et al. (2004) expanded these previous findings by referring to of the actual Xangsane Typhoon disaster. This study developed a scenario simulation databank focusing on Taipei City by integrating typhoon, flood disasters and the air accident, and includes a prototype for a multi-screen exercise design module and documentation system.

In May 2006, the new CEOC opened at Dapinglin, Taipei County. Soon after its routine activation, previously developed scenario and exercises were applied to conduct a typhoon and flooding exercise on May 30, 2006. In the subsequent three years, a central -government-conducted earthquake disaster management exercise were conducted respectively focusing on Taiwan’s southern and eastern regions (2006), central Taiwan (2007), and northern region (2008) on the September 21st National Disaster Prevention Day (also known as 921 National Disaster Prevention Day). Since 2007, program implementation has expanded to cover Taipei County and Taoyuan County.

The 2006 exercise includes an earthquake disaster that affected the eastern and southern parts of the island and mobilized the C EOC to conduct a simulation exercise as follows:

Table 1. Earthquake scenarios and exercises for the 921 National Disaster Prevention Day , 2006

In the 2007 exercise, the Central Weather Bureau and the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering joined the exercise to facilitate in compiling the disaster simulation data; these data included earthquake disaster intelligence from the December 26, 2006 earthquake in Hengtsuen and the June 18, 2007, earthquake in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. In addition, the emergency rescue communications system was adapted to combine various functions of the communications system, such as the online linkup between the Central Government and local governments, the integrated functions of the emergency command communications platform cars, and image transmission by helicopter, into the design of the scenarios. The exercise simulated a 7.2-magnitude of earthquake that occurred in central Taiwan; some areas were subjected to an earthquake intensity of over 6-magnitude, resulting in several major disasters, including an event of the damage of power transmission line, the spill of the toxic gas from the science park, the event of critical transportation accident, a major fire explosion and so on. These created mass casualties, building collapses, life-supporting pipeline destructions. The subjects are described in Table 2.

Table 2 . Earthquake scenarios and exercises for the 921 National Disaster Prevention Day, 2007

The 2008 exercise, which marked the third year of such exercises, primarily entailed staging drills focusing on the northern urban areas, and rather than the sole implementation by the CEOC, a synchronized exercise mode combining the central and local governments of Taipei County and Taoyuan County was employed. The exercise run at 13:00, and a shallow earthquake of 6.9-magnitude took place at a San-chiao fault with epicenter at 25.02 North latitude and 12.47 East longitude, 5.1 km southwest of Taipei City’s seismic station near Banciao City, and focus at a depth of 10km. This event triggered disasters across Taipei City, Taipei County and Taoyuan County. The exercise script simulated disaster situations 48 hours after the disaster had erupted. The subjects are depicted in the Table 3.

Table 3 . Earthquake scenarios and exercises for the 921 National Disaster Prevention Day, 2008

To factually test the audiovisual conference systems that the NDPPC equipped at various local governments as well as to integrate the Emergency Command and Control SNG Vehicles of the various command systems, the exercise processed not only called for the central, Taipei county, Taoyuan County command center commands to conduct the audiovisual meeting, but it also included two advanced command centers in the both disaster-affected areas of Sanchong City in Taipei County and Longtan in Taoyuan County. In addition, Emergency Command and Control SNG Vehicles linked the three emergency operation centers to conduct a five-location video signal online link-up.

Figure 1 The CEOC’s five-location audiovisual conferencing meeting.

In addition, the exercise script was based on the earthquake results of a large-scale urban earthquake, covered a large-scale national urban disaster. Taoyuan County and Taipei County conducted the exercise based on their own scripts. Figure 2 depicts the interactive structure of the three emergency operation centers. The scripts of the exercise were based on the real conditions of the emergency operation center. The disaster reporting and the arrangements of disaster conditions were taking as the major targets.

1. The functions set for CEOC
The sources of the disaster conditions and related information may come from the city’s or county’s governments, the media, the information from the National Fire Agency, the direct call to CEOC, and the information from other departments and agencies. Except for the reporting or the supporting requested from local governments, CEOC should call counties’ EOC to confirm received information. After the identification of supporting items, the staff of related departments and agencies dispatched in the EOC should meet to decide the supporting strategies.

2. The functions set for counties’ EOC
The sources of the disaster conditions and related information may come from the direct calls from the public through the 911 of fire bureaus or 110 of the police offices, the local governments, the media, and the local offices of the central governmental departments and agencies. Local EOCs should confirm the real conditions immediately. If local governments can handle it by themselves, they should decide and practice the strategies right away, and report the conditions to the central EOC. If local EOCs are not capable of handling it, they should apply for the assistance to CEOC directly.

Figure 2 The exercise mode and interactive relationships among the various emergency operation centers.

Figure 3 A functional group meeting at the CEOC.

In addition, the 2008 exercise included more detailed scenario figures that were supplied to the participating central and local government s at the development phase to draft; these scenario figures were provided to the participants of the exercise for constructing more realistic and relevant strategies. As this measure was the first time implemented among all of the various simulated exercises in Taiwan, the figures included the following categories:

1. The requirement that a substation supplies power.
2. The scope of power outage.
3. Traffic accidents on the bridges at both Taipei City and County.
4. Toppled buildings and injured people in various places.
5. Public infrastructure and facility damages.
6. The number of people requiring transportation, evacuation, and placement at various public transportation systems.
7. Toppled buildings in Sanchong City and Jhongli City.
8. Transportation disruption.
9. Information on housing damages and destructions.
10. Disaster information to the THSR offices at Banciao and Taoyaun Stations .
11. Damages at schools in disaster-affected areas.
12. Disaster-affected hillside communities in Sansia, Taipei and Longtan, Taoyuan.
13. People trapped in various THSR trains.
14. People trapped in various Taiwan Rail trains.
15. The problems of shelters.
16. Debris flow potential streams.

Findings and Discussions

By analyzing the development and implementation of three exercises from 2006 to 2008, this paper examined some special issues as well as some common issues.

On the 921 National Disaster Prevention Day of the year 2006, two special events were set; one involved a train derailment that led to mass casualties ; and the other involved a harbor chemical storage tank leakage near a densely-populated urban area. In fact, during large-scale earthquakes, a train derailment was often deemed a local disaster and was not considered to present any risk of secondary disaster. However, given that the earthquake resistance of chemical storage tanks is hard to verify or demonstrate during an scenario, which is particularly troublesome since chemical storage in the Kaohsiung was located near a densely populated urban area, there seemed to be a lack of relevant overall plan of regional evacuation, and the ominous nonexistence of a information support system for collecting the wind direction was felt, along with a need to be able to and collect and concentrate data needed for basic emergency operations. Problematically, the rescue operations were under the jurisdiction of the central government, whereas the evacuation was under the jurisdiction of the local government. Consequently, this exercise highlighted the need to further examine relevant earthquake disaster management strategies for chemical industrial facilities located near urban areas.

The topic of chemical substance leakage was also explored in the 921 National Disaster Prevention Day of the year 2007 , as a newly developed science park in the central Taiwan was included in the exercise and the disaster area was expanded to cover the jurisdictions of Taichung County and Taichung City. As in the previous exercise, local governments had difficulties grappling with the state of the toxic chemical substances and other hazardous chemical used by the various manufacturers at the science park. In fact, there had been chemical raw material fire accidents at the nearby Taichung Industrial Park that also resulted in river pollution due to fire rescue efforts; nevertheless, there had not been any comprehensive decision-making support system by the local governments aimed at regulating the type and volume of chemical substances used at the science park.

Two developments emerged in the 2007 exercise. Firstly , the THSR was defined into the scenario. Pertinent emergency operation procedures were reviewed as part of the exercise. As the THSR is a private enterprise, it already had a rather comprehensive set of various emergency procedures from the Japanese Shinkansen system. The exercise involved passengers who attempted to breach exit doors due to the unbearable heat that was created as the train grounded to a halt; this scenario accounted for the varied thinking and behavioral modes between the residents, which may be pertinent in later exercises or real scenarios.

Secondly, fire and explosive incidents at the Taichung Thermal power plant were simulated as triggered by the earthquake; these incidents threatened the greater area’s power supply as well as public safety. This scenario involved the earthquake resilience of critical infrastructure and key resources in urban areas which were rarely considered in Taiwan’s earthquake disaster management strategy.

Combined urban earthquake disasters in the northern area were not highlighted until the 2008 exercise, and the supply of various refined simulation data further served as a starting point for developing this next functional exercise. The unique scenario of the exercise involved the onslaught of a typhoon disaster subsequent to an earthquake disaster in order to simulate the response plan aimed at addressing the possible eruption of the Shihmen Reservoir. Although the Water Resource Agency, the Ministry of Economic Affairs had a comprehensive emergency operation plan in place, this exercise exposed a low level of information transparency and a lack of coordination with local governments in the downstream urban areas, as they had not been included in the development of the regional disaster prevention plan.

Aside from the special events of these earthquake exercises, there were several common issues that spanned the three exercises. First issue is the role of the media. In each of these three exercises, the media’s erroneous coverage and the problems of professional ethics posed two critical problems. In fact, the evolution of the media’s role since the Chi-chi Earthquake, particularly with respect to its exaggerated coverage and sensationalism that drew criticism amid market competition, forced the government to divert enormous efforts to address the media during major earthquake response work s. Rather than a cooperative and mutually supportive relationship, the interaction between the media and the government involved wasting substantial social resources. Hence, there is a need to reach a detailed consensus regarding how the government should engage the media before disasters as well as whether the media can be requisitioned as per the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act.

Furthermore, in addition to malfunctions regarding the power and water supply, the break down that occurred regarding post-disaster communications information systems emerged as a critical problem that directly impacts the reporting of disaster information and the dispatching of disaster rescue resources. The communication malfunctions took two forms. One is related to the communication facilities damaged by/during the earthquake, which resulted in a disruption of communication information. The other one is the paralysis of communication systems due to the influx of communication. Given that Taiwan’s emergency operation centers and governmental functions operated relies on the Internet and its communications systems and that both exercises and real scenarios may be forced to operate without access to information, addressing rescue efforts when critical information is lacking is a probable post-disaster scenario that must be addressed.

Lastly, the exercises showed that the ability of transportation systems which were able to respond to post-disaster evacuation and control measures was virtually nonexistent. In the case of the Taipei City and County, which included bridges and dense buildings, the onset of an earthquake disaster could result in detrimental disaster situations that could impact existing transportation system and the dispatch of disaster rescue resources. More severely, various issues, such as handling traffic conditions during peak rush hour, effectively directing passengers of various mass transportation systems to evacuate, and determining the exact role of the central and local governments, still required further analysis. In turn, this highlights a direct need to draft and finalize a future strategy focus.

An overview and goals for urban earthquake disaster management strategies

Based on the results derived from the three exercises, these exercises could indeed contributed to uncovering major issues that must be addressed in urban earthquake disaster management strategies. A few important goals for such strategies were identified as follows.

First, these exercises make possible the application of relevant procedures in order to use important research data. One of the objectives of staging these exercises has been to review existing plans and procedures by defining events and subjects through a simulation exercise mode, which has been critical in achieving this goal. Yet, it may be useful to consolidate and apply pertinent research findings independently developed by various centers or institutes in order to avoid wasting resources. As the development of an exercise requires the review of the emergency response plan as well as related procedures and research data, the exercise development process is useful in identifying conflicts and strategic inadequacies, and even though such issues may not fully manifest in an exercise process, internal review reports are still useful for identifying problems with significant influence s in urban earthquake disaster management strategy.

The second goal involves the degree of cooperation among the various levels of the government as well as between the government and crucial private enterprises; the exercises suggested that a lack of cooperation tended to be a problem in urban earthquake disaster management strategy. Although critical infrastructure and facilities, such as the THSR, thermal power plants, chemical storage tanks, science parks, the Shihmen Reservoir and so forth, tend to fall under the jurisdiction of the central government, yet local governments are at the first line of emergency rescue. Hence, urban earthquake disaster management strategies must facilitate information exchange and bridge the various arms of the government and link together the government and private entities.

The third goal is to apply the results of these exercises to modify disaster management strategies. As mentioned above, issues can be identified through the development and implementation of various exercises, yet there is a lack of subsequent follow-up and evaluation mechanisms. The finer and more detailed the government’s task-sharing must become, and so the functions of decision correction offered by the exercise would become more ominous. Nevertheless, given the lack of comprehensive follow-up and improvement mechanisms, the yearly staging of an emergency scenario cannot feedback for the timely adjustment of disaster management strategy.

Conclusion

Following the Chi-chi Earthquake, Taiwan began to systematically review and improve its emergency management system, yet there is still a lack of a national and policy-oriented spearheading with respect to disaster mitigation and response management measures for major urban earthquake disasters. For example, every four years, the Executive Yuan, Taiwan holds a national technology conference. The strategies adopted at the 2005 conference emphasized the search for and application of an earthquake disaster loss assessment system; at the 2009 conference that marked the 10th anniversary of the Chi-chi Earthquake, a recapitulation report on Topic VI mentioned the importance of studying and drafting a large-scale urban earthquake disaster mitigation strategy. Although such issues were academically discussed over the past decades, there was not much to be done in terms of the government’s actual strategizing framework.

A majority of Taiwan’s population is exposed to a high risk of typhoon, flood and earthquake disasters due to its geological location. Given this scenario, the development of a mechanism for validating Taiwan’s urban earthquake disaster management strategy has emerged as an urgent task both for Taiwan or its neighboring countries that share the country’s geological environment. The United Nations (UN) International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) has mentioned the imminent urgency of government action with respect to these issues in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 and the 2007 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Exercises, when adopted as vital tools in simulating disaster responses, offer the advantages of: simulating major disasters with a low probability of occurrence but with major impacts; simulating the disaster scenarios unable to manifest through actual drills; and conserving the enormous sums of funding in the conventional accrual drill exercises. Some countries, such as the United States and Japan, have been increasingly dedicated to developing exercise processes that closely resemble actual scenarios. This development has eliminated the former recitation-based execution mode of so-called chess game drills and instead has given rise to revamped onsite disaster information announcements and response plans through which to conduct exercises in an attempt to closely simulate a major disaster and its consequences.

It is found that the planning and implementation of earthquake scenario exercises over the past three years helpful to uncover some key topics of concern regarding earthquake disasters in Taiwan that require further observation to determine the feasibility of follow-up measures and improvements and the role of ongoing analysis in the exercise of a national-level, integrated exercise plan. These efforts should contribute to the formation of a comprehensive mechanism with which to routinely validate urban earthquake disaster management strategies.

References

References in Chinese

Lee, H . Y ., Shan, H. Y., Maa, S. Y., Lin, Y. J. & Wang, J. J. ( 2003 ) A case Study on Establishing a Flooding Disaster Simulation System – showcasing the example of the Keelung River in the Sijhih area , National Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee, Executive Yuan , Taipei.

National Science Council , Executive Yuan ( 2005 a) “Seventh National Science Technology Conference Organization” report . National Science Council , Taipei , Taiwan: Author .

National Science Council , Executive Yuan ( 2005 b) , An Overview on the Current State of Taiwan’s Science Technology Development”, Strategy V: Accelerating the technology’s commercialized applications to strengthen its interactive social development. National Science Council , Taipei , Taiwan: Author.

National Science Council , Executive Yuan ( 2008) , the Eighth National Science Technology Conference Overview Report, Subject VI: Integrating the technological energy to bridge for a sustainable development , Taipei, Taiwan: Author.

Shan, H . Y ., Maa, S. Y. & Lin, Y. J. ( 2004) A study on Establishing a Large-scale Disaster Risks Management Decision Simulation Exercise System , National Disaster Protection and Prevention Committee, Executive Yuan , Taipei.

Shan, H . Y ., Maa, S. Y. Lin, Y. J. & Chen, C. L. ( 200 6) , The Study for Improvement in EOC’s Emergency Response Efficiency, National Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee, Executive Yuan , Taipei.

Maa, S . Y . & Lin, Y. J. ( 200 8) Study on the Functional Enhancement of Coordination, Communication and Integration of Central EOC, National Fire Agency, Ministry of the Interior, Taipei.

Maa, S . Y . & Wang, J. J. ( 200 8) The National Disaster Prevention Day Earthquake Disaster Exercise Script and Film Editing Production Completion Report , National Disaster Prevention and Protection Committee, Executive Yuan , Taipei.

R eferences in English

Department of Homeland Security (2008) National Response Framework. Washington, D.C.

Federal Emergency Management A gency (2003) Exercise Design - Professional Development Series. Washington, D.C.

Federal Emergency Management A gency (2006) Principles of Emergency Management (IS230). Washington, D.C.

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management (2007) Emergency Management Glossary of Terms. The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Roberts, P. (2007) Toward a National Hazards Risk Assessment. Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Volume 4, Issue 3 2007 Article 9.

United Nations (2005) Report of the World Conference on Disaster Reduction. Kobe, Hyogo, Japan, 18-22 January 2005.

United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2007) Disaster Risk Reduction 2007 Global Review

Web site information

http://www.eeri.org/site/projects/eq-scenarios

Footnotes

1. For pertinent case examples, please refer to U.S. Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s (EERI) pertinent information and definition on earthquake scenario at Web site: http://www.eeri.org/site/projects/eq-scenarios. (return)
   
2. Exercise Design – Professional Development Series, FEMA, 2003 (return)

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