[NHK] In the Great East Japan Earthquake, the government offices of local governments were damaged and important data such as family registration was about to be lost. What kind of measures are the local governments currently taking?

Data, stay alive April 9th, 18:48

"Data, stay alive," the

man prayed and loaded a muddy data server into his car.

Information such as family registrations for 16,000 people was recorded.

The important data that supports our lives was about to be lost.

(Morioka Broadcasting Station, Hiroshi Ichige, Network News Department, Shinya Fujishima, Saka Kaneko, Media Development Planning Center, Kazushige Saito)

Find the server

Takuma Sasaki.

I was a staff member of Iwate prefecture and was in charge of supporting municipalities.

March 25, 2011, two weeks after the day of the tsunami.

I was driving to Otsuchi on the coast.

The purpose is to recover a data server that may be in a tsunami-swallowed office.

Mr. Sasaki

"I was disappointed when I heard that the server was washed away. I thought it would be impossible to recover. I thought that this was a big deal because many staff members were affected."

At that time, at the Otsuchi Town Hall, the government office where the server was located was hit by the tsunami, making it impossible to use administrative data and issue resident cards.

Where did the dead or missing person live?

Even the confirmation of the safety of the victims was in a state of being unresolved.

I don't know if the server remains in the first place.

Instead of the person in charge of the town who can not afford it, I will search for a server anyway.

With that in mind, Mr. Sasaki entered Otsuchi Town.

There are mountains of debris all over the town.

Have the Self-Defense Forces remove the debris from the surrounding area and manage to enter the government office.

Sediment flowed into the building and the equipment was scattered.

Isn't the server also being streamed?

In the server room on the 2nd floor, getting muddy.

"There was ..."

There was a shelf full of muddy servers that was miraculously left unwashed.

A number of saury were washed aside.

The server remained wet.

"Is the data safe?" Sasaki prayed and loaded it into the back seat of the car.

The server will be handed over to the vendor the same day and cleaned at the manufacturer's factory in Tokyo.

Fortunately, I was able to clean the disk part where the data is recorded.

In addition, because there was a power outage before the tsunami hit, the server was covered in seawater but did not short-circuit and the data remained unbroken.

And two weeks later.

The data was recovered by careful work and delivered to Otsuchi Town.

Information such as family registration and tax payment for 15,994 residents was not lost.

The issuance of the "Certificate of Disaster", which is indispensable for rebuilding lives, was delayed by one month from the neighboring city of Kamaishi.

Nevertheless, by using the recovered data, we were able to take a step toward reconstruction.

Mr. Sasaki

"I was lucky this time, but if I couldn't restore it ... I couldn't cover it manually, so I think it caused a lot of trouble."

Data loss risk nationwide

There were also cases where administrative data was in jeopardy, such as Otsuchi Town, in Rikuzentakata City, Iwate Prefecture, and Minamisanriku Town, Miyagi Prefecture.

What they had in common was that the government building was damaged.

This time, NHK used the tsunami inundation assumption and the location information of the local government offices to find out how many government offices in the country could be damaged by the tsunami.

That is the image below.

The yellow circles are the government buildings that may be damaged by the tsunami.

The number is 182 in total.

(☆ There is a map at the end of the article where you can check your area.) At

these government buildings, the issue is how to protect important administrative data from disasters.

From the lessons learned from the disaster, the country requires that data be "backed up" in advance.

Therefore, I asked about the status of backup at these 182 government buildings.

Then, 15 local governments responded that "the backup has not been completed" and "I do not feel the need to back up".

In addition, although the backup was completed, there were 14 cases where the storage location was in the same government building and there was a possibility of damage.

A national official said about this situation as follows.

National official

"There are various storage methods, but the important thing is that the data storage location and the government building are not damaged at the same time. I want you to take measures to prevent data loss due to a disaster."

The contents of the duralumin case are ...

In this interview, many local governments were backing up their data.

Many use a service called "cloud" that can store data outside the office.

Since 2011, when the earthquake struck, the introduction has progressed in local governments.

On the other hand, some local governments combined it with analog methods.

Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, where a large tsunami is expected due to a huge Nankai Trough earthquake.

What do you think the photo above is?

When you open the lid ...

Inside is a magnetic tape recording medium called LTO.

This contains the backup data.

In Tanabe City, once a month, data is stored on a recording medium and placed in a duralumin case.

And, how, we send it to Habikino City, Osaka and Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture (!) Actually, this is an effort to store data with each other.

Habikino City and Kashihara City also send similar cases to Tanabe City, so they keep them in a safe.

Even if the government building is damaged, the data can be protected if one of the government buildings remains.

It seems that it started after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and it is an initiative that has continued for more than 20 years.

When I asked the person in charge why he would continue this analog method ...

Person in charge:

"Information and communication technology has developed, and data is stored in inland facilities. However, just in case, it is important to back up in various ways. Therefore, this has been going on for many years. I'm still doing the method. "

Is there an alternative government building?

Even if you protect the data, if the government building becomes unusable, it will hinder the subsequent reconstruction.

This is because we will lose the base for disaster response and the window for providing services to residents.

Therefore, what is important is the "alternative government building", which is an alternative government building to be used in the event of a disaster.

I also investigated this.

Then, of the 182 government buildings nationwide that could be damaged by the tsunami, 34 had no alternative government buildings.

Furthermore, even if an alternative government building was decided, there were 43 cases where there was a possibility that it could not be used because it was in a flooded area.

There are 77 places in total.

It can become dysfunctional in the event of a disaster.

Distribute functions in preparation for disasters

Naturally, the local government is also trying to overcome it with various ideas.

In Usuki City, Oita Prefecture, the back of the government building is immediately behind the sea, and in the worst case, the government building may be flooded by 2.75 meters.

This is the level at which the first floor of the government building will be submerged.

In Usuki City, we considered relocating the government building after the Great East Japan Earthquake, but the city area is mostly flooded.

There was no land available to build the government building.

In the first place, the central city area where Usuki City Hall is located has a history of prospering as a castle town of Usuki Castle built by Sorin Otomo, a warlord of the Warring States.

There were also concerns that the bustle would be lost if the city hall disappeared from here.

So I thought about a method of "dispersing some of the functions" of the city hall.

The "Disaster Prevention and Crisis Management Division", which is at the forefront of disaster response, has been established as a firefighting facility on a hill.

The "Construction Division" and "Water and Sewerage Division", which are the key to restoration, have been relocated to the site of an inland high school.

The firefighting facility with the Crisis Management Division has a large emergency power supply in case of a power outage, and even if there is a power outage, it will last for at least 3 days.

In addition, we protect data by utilizing the cloud and distributing servers to multiple locations in the city.

Deputy Mayor

"There may not be an answer that everyone can agree on, but it was good that we were able to share the issues. Since the topographical features and financial situation differ depending on the region, we should share the information with the residents and take appropriate measures. I think it's important to discuss. "

Functional distribution discussion with residents

Before the "dispersion" measures in Usuki City, which we interviewed this time, were realized, it seems that volunteer citizens discussed the relocation of the government building.

Even now, the city hall was decorated with a model of the government building that the citizens had in mind at that time.

It was not possible to create a model-like government building, but the words spoken by the staff left an impression on me.

"It is a fortune to be able to

really

discuss the existence of the" government building "including the residents."

We use the government office in various situations such as moving and getting married.

However, if data is lost due to damage caused by a disaster, it will have a great impact on the reconstruction of life.

How do you protect the safety of the government office, which is the base that supports your life?

I felt it was an unavoidable problem for us as well.

National data map

When you move the cursor, the countermeasure status of the government building is displayed.

Oita Prefecture Data Map

Morioka Broadcasting Station Kamaishi Branch Reporter

Hiroshi Ichige

Joined in 2015 After working at Saga Station, he

was in charge of earthquake disaster coverage at the Kamaishi Branch.

Network news department reporter

Fujishima Shinya

2009 it joined

Morioka stations, through the social part incumbent

responsible for the disaster reporting, data analysis

Saka

Kaneko,

Director of

Network News Department In

charge of data analysis and visualization in the data visualization team "NMAPS"

Kazushige Saito,

Technical Director,

Media Planning and Development Center

Mainly in charge of solution architect and data visualization

Data, stay alive