Development of NERSS Training Program for Earthquake Emergency Response Capacity Building of Local Governments

Responses to medium-magnitude earthquakes are as significant as to catastrophic earthquakes, because medium-magnitude temblors occur as many as a dozen times more than catastrophic earthquakes – at least from the year 1900. In China, local governments are obligated to protect residents against earthquakes that have a magnitude of <bm>Ms</bm>$6.0. The ways in which local governments perform these obligations differ, however, due to obstacles such as inadequate disaster planning, a lack of public earthquake awareness, and a shortage of qualified emergency managers. When an earthquake hits, the hazards that residents are unaware of may arise concurrently, putting thousands lives and millions of acres of property in danger. In short, the response capacity of local governments is crucial to an earthquake’s aftermath.

To enhance the capacity of local government response to earthquake emergencies, the National Earthquake Response Support Service (NERSS) of China started work on training programs years ago. With the cooperation with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japanese scientists in the last five years, based on lessons learned from China’s historical earthquakes and disasters, the authors have created the prototype for an earthquake disaster management curriculum, which it has then been demonstrated and continuously improved. This paper reviews the prototype curriculum and its development methodology, presents demonstrative deliveries of the curriculum, and discusses training effectiveness and further improvements. Applying an international emergency management framework and related experience, focusing on local government capacity building, the demonstrative trainings have been proved to be beneficial to local government response activities and the latest amendment to earthquake preplanning in China. Future systematic tracking research of training effectiveness is proposed to keep curriculum updating and appropriate as times change.