The Role of Buildings in Disaster Risk Reduction: Focusing on the Great East Japan Earthquake

AbstractAs a result of unprecedented tsunami happened 11 March 2011, in the coastal Tohoku area of Japan, around 126,000 buildings were destroyed. Some of the buildings withstood the strong tsunami, though the number of such buildings is small. Obviously the strength of the waves was the strongest determinant of the destruction or endurance, some other factors such as inundation height, depth of the building parallel to the tsunami direction and opening ratio have also been understood as the factors supporting the survival. This paper investigates Sendai sewage purification center which survived the GEJE and tsunami in the context of its endurance