2015 Volume 15 Issue 5 Pages 5_17-5_30
One important step that we can take to reduce damage from earthquake and subsequent tsunamis is to simulate the situation immediately after an earthquake and analyze its impact for effective countermeasures construction. In this study, we predicted building damage based on response analysis for a realistic strong ground motion and simulated the situation of tsunami evacuation in order to access the effect of building collapse and subsequent road blockade to tsunami evacuation. We used one district in Tanabe City in Wakayama Prefecture where we expect to have strong ground shaking and subsequent tsunami with the expect height of 12 m. We found that 1) the prepared countermeasures are not enough to let everyone evacuate in the target region, 2) a number of survivors increase 3.7% at highest and the time necessary for 90% of the evacuees to evacuate decreases about 1 minute if the ratio of seismic reinforcement is increased to 100%. This shows reinforcement needs to be planned together with the locations, numbers, and capacities of the evacuation shelters.
