title：japan’s triple disaster of 2011: lessons for organizing emergency response to mega-disasters
speaker：professor arnold m. howitt, harvard kennedy school of government
time：12:00-14:00, august 25th, 2014
venue：room 609, school of public policy and management, tsinghua university
language：english
introduction:
following the 1995 great hanshin and awaji earthquake, which devastated the city of kobe, japan initiated emergency management reforms that overall had the effect of establishing greater central control by the national government of response to major disasters. that structure was tested in 2011 by the great east japan earthquake, when the severe earthquake-tsunami-and nuclear accident wreaked enormous damage on the coast of northeastern japan.this seminar will examine how well that emergency response system worked in 2011. it will make the argument that, because catastrophic emergencies such as the geje are geographically highly distributed events, they cannot be handled effectively by centralized response systems. therefore a different paradigm of response is needed to make the inevitable decentralization of response operate more effectively.
bio the speaker:
arnold m. howitt is executive director of the ash center for democratic governance and innovation at the john f. kennedy school of government, harvard university. he is also faculty co-director of the program on crisis leadership, which conducts research, executive education programs, and action projects. dr. howitt has worked extensively on emergency preparedness and crisis management issues in the us and abroad. dr. howitt is also a trainer for the federal emergency management agency (fema), worked with the city of los angeles on disaster recovery planning (2010-11), served as a strategic adviser and trainer-of-trainers for china’s new national institute of emergency management at the chinese academy of governance (2010-11), and was one of the organizers of a “lessons-learned” roundtable at harvard (2011) for leaders of organizations that responded to haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
dr. howitt is co-author/editor of public health preparedness (forthcoming, 2015) natural disaster management in the asia-pacific (forthcoming, 2015), managing crises: responding to large-scale emergencies (2009) and countering terrorism: dimensions of preparedness (2003), among many other writings.