The 3.11 Disaster and Data

Abstract

“3.11”—the worst disaster in postwar Japanese history, consisting of the Great East Japan Earthquake (March 11, 2011), the subsequent tsunami and the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant—taught us many valuable lessons. This paper reviews the disaster from a computer scientist’s perspective, paying special attention to the problem of presenting data to the public, and discusses what we could do and can still do.