Will the heavy rain warning disappear? Discussion on organizing disaster prevention information on weather continues

The Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, which are proceeding with a drastic review of disaster prevention information on weather, will sort out floods and sediment-related disasters instead of the conventional "heavy rain warning" in order to convey the danger of disasters in an easy-to-understand manner. I showed a draft policy.

Experts said, "First of all, we should consider what kind of information the Japan Meteorological Agency will provide," and we will continue discussions in the future.

The Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism have set up study groups made up of experts and are proceeding with discussions for a drastic review of information.

Currently, the evacuation information released by the local government is based on five levels of heavy rain alert.

On the other hand, disaster prevention information is complicated and understandable, such as "heavy rain warning" and "heavy rain special warning" include a call for sediment-related disasters and flood damage, and "warning information" only for sediment-related disasters. Difficulty has been pointed out.

For this reason, at the meeting on the 14th, a person in charge of the Japan Meteorological Agency presented a policy plan to convey the degree of danger for each phenomenon that occurs, such as "flood", "inundation", "earth and sand disaster", and "storm surge".

We are also considering combining "flood" and "inundation" for residents.

In response, the experts who attended said, "It is impossible for the Japan Meteorological Agency to cover all needs, and there may be a part that is left to the private sector. First of all, we should discuss the outline of what kind of information the Japan Meteorological Agency will provide. In addition to the opinions such as "If you organize by level, it is meaningless to just apply the current information, and you should have the time required for evacuation and the hit rate."

The Japan Meteorological Agency and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism want to put together a rough policy around this summer.