Ship Availability Evaluation from Pull-type Transportation Period of Nankai Trough Earthquake

Abstract

　The damage caused by the Nankai Trough earthquake is expected to be extremely extensive and severe. From the term of about eight days after the disaster (called “pull-type” transportation period) until reconstruction period there will be a huge transportation demand of goods that far exceeds the capacity of trucks. If transportation cannot be carried out sufficiently, there will be social disorder in the early stages due to shortages of food and beverages, etc. and later, delay of recovery and reconstruction lead to various other problems, like lost economic opportunities, perpetuation of poverty, rising costs of reconstruction, and so on. To mitigate them, ships can be expected to play a large role since they can transport a large amount of goods over long distances with a small number of people. This paper supposes the largest type of Nankai Trough earthquake and evaluates the available quantities of ferries, RORO ships and general cargo ships using static and dynamic methods. In the analysis, since the dynamic evaluation result depends greatly on ships’ position and their navigational status at the date and time of the disaster, the evaluation is performed using long-term ship specification data base and AIS (Automatic Identification System) data for whole Japan. It is possible to obtain the current available transport capacity of ships and its future prospects after the disaster.