Page 232 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 3

STS541 Masao T. et al.
The second point is to save the various statistical data that has been
maintained and accumulated in the event of a large-scale disaster as a
reference for the future. Some countries seem to have good practices in this
regard. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau has a webpage “Emergency
Preparedness” on its website. It contains various statistical data related to
large-scale disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. In Japan,
we believe that it is necessary to accumulate and store various data and
information collected and maintained in accordance with this so that the
lessons of the Great East Japan Earthquake will not be forgotten and kept as
records for the future.

7. Conclusion
According to the Statistics Act, official statistics are regarded as
"foundations for making rational decisions for the citizens." In order to
produce official statistics, it is essential for respondents from households and
companies surveyed to respond to statistical surveys. For this reason, we have
been working with many enumerators who concentrate their effort on the
statistical activities. Official statistics are a valuable source of information for
society, which is created by the cooperation of many people, such as those
surveyed, enumerators, and related parties in local governments and statistical
departments in Ministries. And the importance of these matters remains the
same in normal and disaster situations. In the wake of natural disasters such
as the Great East Japan Earthquake, we sincerely hope that the producers and
users of official statistics will cooperate to ensure that the significance of
official statistics is widely recognized and that official statistics will be more
useful to the public.

References
1. National Police Agency (2019). Police Countermeasures and Damage
Situation associated with 2011Tohoku district - off the Pacific Ocean
Earthquake. March 8, 2019. [Online]. Available:
https://www.npa.go.jp/news/other/earthquake2011/pdf/higaijokyo_e.pdf.
[Accessed April 11, 2019].
2. Statistics Bureau of Japan (2019). Information on the Great East Japan
Earthquake. [Online]. Available:
https://www.stat.go.jp/info/shinsai/index.html. (In Japanese only).
[Accessed April 11, 2019]

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