Coping with Unexpected Incidents through Environmental Resilience to Promote Human Adaptation

When the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, a large number of people and organizations faced unexpected situations. Even under such circumstances, some people flexibly responded to the situation to minimize damage caused by the disaster beyond the codes of conduct, including manuals, laws, regulations, precedents, and procedures learned in training, that should otherwise have been complied with. Although some of them ended in failure, most yielded positive results for the following reasons: 1) the possibility of accidents was considered even before the earthquake to prevent them as much as possible; 2) when the unexpected occurred, people on the front line of the disaster voluntarily and autonomously made decisions and acted. It was suggested that, in the event of such a disaster as the earthquake in Tohoku, adaptation and resilience are required to respond to the situation, rather than relying on manuals. As a key point, it is important to enhance the abilities of individual persons and evaluate their efforts in each situation to improve the resilience of individuals and organizations, instead of assessing their approaches solely based on the results.