February 10, 2020 Implementation of Anti-disaster Drills for Securing Communication Services in Times of Large-scale Disasters

To restore the communication service of centrally affected municipal offices quickly and urgently in times of large-scale disaster, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has decided to conduct disaster prevention drills jointly with local governments and communications carriers. The drills will be held in the city of Niigata (Niigata Prefecture) on Thursday, February 13, and the city of Kure (Hiroshima Prefecture) on Monday, February 17, 2020. Through these drills, MIC aims at formulating a cooperation manual for the first emergency disaster response that MIC, local governments, and telecommunications companies should perform.

1. Background purpose

In recent years, natural disasters, such as typhoons, earthquakes, and heavy rains, have caused tremendous damage to telecommunication services, including landline and mobile phones, which are important infrastructures for people’s lives.
In the event of a large-scale disaster, it is important for municipal government offices, which is an important base for disaster response, to restore communication services quickly. Then activities, such as the rescue of lives and support for evacuees, will not be hindered even if the communication services are damaged.
For this reason, MIC aims to formulate an initial response that should be coordinated by the national government, local governments, and telecommunications carriers as a cooperation manual to promptly restore communication services in affected municipalities in the event of a large-scale disaster. Accordingly, MIC has decided to conduct disaster prevention drills at the following two locations.

2. Overview of drills

1. Time and date

• 1.
  Niigata: 1:00 to 2:00 pm on Thursday, February 13, 2020
• 2.
  Kure: 1:00 to 2:45 pm on Monday, February 17, 2020

2. Venues

• 1.

  Headquarters Meeting Room, 3F, Niigata City Hall
  (602-1 Gakkochodori, Chuo-ku, Niigata, 951-8550)

  • *
    A demonstration will be held in front of the main entrance of the Annex of Niigata City Hall
• 2.

  Conference Room 201, 2F, Kure City Hall (4-6-1 Chuo, Kure-shi, Hiroshima Prefecture)

  • *
    A demonstration will be held at the site of the northern parking lot of Chuo Park

3. Participating organizations (planned)

Niigata venue

MIC, Shin-Etsu Regional Bureau of Telecommunications, Niigata Prefecture, Niigata City, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation, NTT Docomo, KDDI Corporation, and Softbank Corp.

Kure venue

MIC, Chugoku Regional Bureau of Telecommunications, Ground Self-Defense Force, Maritime Self-Defense Force, Hiroshima Prefecture, Kure City, West Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., NTT Docomo, KDDI Corp., and Softbank Corp.

3. Contents of drills

The parties concerned will conduct initial response training based on scenarios that assume communication damage due to power outages or cable cuts in a wide range of cities, due to a major earthquake in Niigata and due to the effects of heavy rain in Kure City.
It is assumed that liaison officers from liaison offers from MIC, the Regional Bureau of Telecommunications, and telecommunications carriers have been dispatched after the disaster response headquarters were established in each prefecture and city. The parties concerned will conduct drills assuming the emergency recovery of communication damage, such as grasping and sharing damage information for securing communication services and organizing the response status using information systems.