Disaster Prevention Day in Japan

Since 1960, September 1 has served as a reminder to Japanese people to be prepared for emergencies. With a 70 percent chance of a major earthquake in Tokyo within the next 30 years, many organizations and schools across the country will hold evacuation drills.

Japan has utilized its experience with natural disasters to develop an array of disaster-prevention technologies, some of which have been exported across Asia and elsewhere, such as flood-control technology used in Thailand, seismic-control and base-isolation technology used in Turkey, and tsunami-protection technology used in Chile. The state-of-the-art technology may also be exported and used at disaster sites around the world in future.