Analysis on Records of Activities Conducted to Rescue Cultural Property after the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

From an overview of the daily reports of rescue activities undertaken to restore cultural property after the Great East Japan Earthquake, four elements（activity, cultural property, damage condition, and attributes of the participants）were categorised and 21 factors extracted using factor analysis. The factor analysis results revealed that communication is crucial in rescue activities. Moreover, rescue activities can be divided into three types, those carried out by（a）experts on cultural assets, （b）experts in some technique（not limited to cultural property）, and （c）general participants. Based on the average factor scores, the characteristics of time series and institutions were extracted. This analysis clarifies that basic data for considering disaster rescue may be obtained from records of rescue activities. Furthermore, valuable suggestions for archiving materials in case of a disaster outbreak were also obtained.