Does the performance of a flood early warning system affect casualties and economic losses? Empirical analysis using open data from the 2018 Japan Floods

Hitomu Kotani; Wataru Ogawa; Kakuya Matsushima

doi:10.51094/jxiv.916

##article.authors##

Hitomu Kotani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Environment and Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5033-0855
Wataru Ogawa Department of Urban Management, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University
Kakuya Matsushima Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51094/jxiv.916

キーワード:

false alarms、 missed events、 regression analyses、 disaster statistics、 public response

抄録

Flood early warning systems are crucial for mitigating flood damage; however, limitations in forecasting technology lead to false alarms and missed events in warnings. Repeated occurrences of these issues may cause people to hesitate to take appropriate action during subsequent warnings, potentially exacerbating flood damage. However, the effects of warning performance on flood damage in Japan have not been analyzed for actual flood events. This study empirically examined these effects by applying Bayesian regression analyses to open data on the 2018 Japan Floods in 127 municipalities in four prefectures (i.e., Okayama, Hiroshima, Ehime, and Fukuoka) for which data were available on the real-time flood warning map (Kouzui Kikikuru in Japanese) during the 2018 Japan Floods, which provides limited open data on warning performance. Based on these data, the false alarm ratio (FAR) and missed event ratio (MER) for each municipality before the 2018 Japan Floods were calculated and used as explanatory variables. The (1) fatalities, (2) injuries, (3) economic losses to general assets, and (4) economic losses to crops during the 2018 Japan Floods were used as outcome variables. Models with and without prefecture-specific effects (prefecture dummies) were considered. The results indicate that a higher FAR was associated with an increase in fatalities, injuries, and economic losses to general assets in the models without prefecture dummies. However, these effects were not clearly observed in models with prefecture dummies, which performed better in terms of the information criterion in cases of injuries and economic losses to general assets. Therefore, the effects of the FAR on outcomes other than fatalities should be interpreted with caution. By contrast, no prominent positive effect of MER was found for any outcome variable in either model. These results provide valuable insights for improving warning systems.

利益相反に関する開示

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could appear to influence the work reported in this study.

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Does the performance of a flood early warning system affect casualties and economic losses?

Empirical analysis using open data from the 2018 Japan Floods