Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Department of Trauma and Critical Care Medicine, Kyorin University School of Medicine, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan.
PLoS One. 2020 Jul 2;15(7):e0235425. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235425. eCollection 2020.
Developing an adequate disaster response capacity involves an assessment of available resources in areas that are vulnerable to disaster. Here, we sought to evaluate the gap between predicted damage in a foreseeable major earthquake versus existing municipality-level resources in Tokyo, Japan.
Our study focused on the 53 municipalities in Tokyo to evaluate the relationships between the predicted number of severe casualties per 1,000 population from a future earthquake, community characteristics, and inpatient bed supply in local hospitals. Correlation analysis and supply-demand balance estimations were carried out at the municipality level, and the results were geographically visualized using choropleth maps.
The correlation analysis showed that higher casualties were correlated with municipalities with faster population increase, higher taxable incomes, lower unemployment rates, and higher bed volumes in disaster base hospitals. Under a maximal damage scenario in a future earthquake, we predict a shortage of 2,780 beds for the treatment of severe casualties across Tokyo. Even under a scenario of cooperation among neighboring municipalities, a shortage of 7,107 beds would remain.
Tokyo is located in a zone where major earthquake damage is anticipated. Cooperation between neighboring municipalities may not suffice to address the undersupply of beds during the acute phase of a disaster. Hence, existing disaster preparedness plans require further reinforcement with a focus on local vulnerabilities.
制定充足的灾害应对能力需要评估易受灾地区的现有资源。在这里，我们试图评估日本东京地区可预见的重大地震造成的预计损失与现有市级资源之间的差距。
我们的研究集中在东京的 53 个市，以评估未来地震中每 1000 人口预计严重伤亡人数、社区特征与当地医院住院床位供应之间的关系。在市级水平上进行相关性分析和供需平衡估算，并使用专题地图进行地理可视化。
相关性分析表明，更高的伤亡人数与人口增长更快、应税收入更高、失业率更低、灾害基础医院床位数量更多的城市相关。在未来地震的最大破坏情景下，我们预计整个东京治疗严重伤亡的床位将短缺 2780 张。即使在相邻城市之间合作的情况下，仍将短缺 7107 张床位。
东京位于预计会发生重大地震破坏的区域。相邻城市之间的合作可能不足以解决灾害急性期床位供应不足的问题。因此，现有的灾害准备计划需要进一步加强，重点关注当地的脆弱性。
