Extraction of new lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake 2011 with resilience engineering methodology

The Great East Japan Earthquake caused substantial damage to complex socio-technical systems essential for modern life. For preventing such damage resulting from a disaster or accident and alleviating such damage, it is important that protections be prepared in advance and a flexible response undertaken after such a catastrophe hits. However, as we actively deduce all sorts of problems that have been brought to light by past disasters in order to protect society from the next disaster, in other words, extract lessons based on "things that went wrong" with socio-technical systems, we have only made a partial effort to deduce lessons based on "things that went right," such as for example, the actions taken that hindered "factors directly related to failures" which arose after the disaster struck. As a result, we run the risk of overlooking lessons which are critical for protecting society from future disasters and which allow us to learn from "things that went right." This article references Resilience Engineering, which is indicative of the importance of learning from "things that went right," and analyzes things that went right in field responses to the earthquake during the Fukushima accident as well as transport operations, in an attempt to deduce new lessons about emergency responses and preparations against unforeseen contingencies, which are common to socio-technical systems. (author)