Improving Local Government Disaster Management Evaluation for Regional Earthquake Risk : Comparative Study of South Korea, UNDRR, and Japan

Abstract

This study aims to propose improvements to a risk-based evaluation system that more effectively incorporates regional earthquake risk into local government disaster management evaluation. To this end, South Korea’s disaster management evaluation system is examined as the diagnostic case, the UNDRR urban resilience framework is used as a normative benchmark, and Japan’s disaster prevention and business continuity systems are analyzed as operational cases through a structured institutional comparison. The findings show that South Korea has made progress in institutionalizing full-cycle disaster management, business continuity, and operational effectiveness. However, further improvements are needed in differentiating regional risk, exposure, and vulnerability; assessing the actual functioning of resident and private-sector networks; strengthening post-disaster learning and feedback; and verifying hazard-specific performance. Accordingly, this study proposes a dual evaluation structure that combines nationwide common core indicators with local risk-specific modules. The earthquake-specific module includes risk profiling, vulnerability reduction, business continuity, inter-organizational interoperability, community capacity, and recovery and learning. These improvements can contribute to shifting disaster management evaluation away from uniform performance assessment toward a system that reflects actual local risks and response capacities.