SENDAI -Towards a Disaster-Resilient and Environmentally-Friendly City

‘Apartment Building with Improved
Disaster Preparedness in Sendai
- the City of Trees’ Certificate

In the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster of 1995, wooden houses built according to the pre-1981 building standard suffered immense damage, leading to the loss of many lives. In response to this, Sendai City is advancing the seismic reinforcement of municipally owned buildings (approximately 99% as of the end of 2018) and implementing seismic capacity diagnoses and subsidization of renovation works for detached wooden houses and condominiums. It also offers advice based on the findings of seismic capacity diagnoses.

Under this system, seismic reinforcement works were implemented on 2,424 wooden houses and two condominium buildings in 19 years between 2004 and 2022.

Improvements in the disaster preparedness of apartment buildings

In 2013, Sendai City set up a ‘Certification program for apartment buildings with improved disaster preparedness in Sendai - the City of Trees’ in order to enhance disaster risk reduction activities in apartment buildings and improve the disaster risk reduction performance of buildings. The City also formulated ‘Guidelines for creating a disaster preparedness manual for apartment buildings’, which is used as reference when a apartment building association of owners make rules for disaster risk reduction activities.