Quantitative Assessment of Daily Life Difficulty Caused by Electric Power and Water Failure based on the Experience of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

The authors conducted a questionnaire survey to 400 households in Miyagi and Iwate Prefecture in March 2015 to understand the effect of power and water failure to their daily lives due to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. This paper reports results of the survey and assessment of daily life difficulty caused by utilities failure. It also quantitatively assesses the residents' daily life difficulty for 35 daily activities based on a proposed accumulative difficulty time. As a result, it clarified that (1) influencing level of refrigerator, light, and heating appliances to the daily lives was higher than other items, and (2) estimated daily life difficulty without refrigirator, for example, was highter than the actual experience.