Earthquake preparedness and response: Comparison of the United States and Japan

Earthquakes often occur with little to no warning and have the potential to cause enormous amounts of destruction and death. Countries with means have developed complex emergency management systems to address this constant threat. The United States and Japan were chosen for comparison because they share a similar amount of risk and have experienced large earthquakes in the last 20 years. These two countries approach this problem in drastically different ways; the United States uses a bottom-up approach, giving a large amount of freedom to local governments to address this risk. The Japanese system spreads responsibility through a directive approach, with the central government taking care of mitigation and parts of recovery, leaving the rest to be sorted out by the prefectures and local governments. This paper focuses specifically on the ways in which these two countries approach preparedness and recovery. The paper concludes with a short analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each system, offering suggestions to strengthen future approaches.