In my classmate’s blog post The Risk of Natural Disaster in Tokyo, Yuki Maruoka shares his own experience of facing natural disasters in Japan and how it can be one of the essential risks for businesses in the area.

I personally agree towards his thoughts and would like to add a more in-depth opinion using my knowledge I gained from EOSC 114: Natural Disasters course as well as displaying how natural disasters effectively impacts company’s SWOT. In Japan, Tokyo is one of the riskiest cities to do business but it is not only because of the location of the city. It is considered “risky” and a “big disaster” only if it effects a large population and if it damages the city economically. To point out the obvious, no one would care if a 9.0 magnitude earthquake happened in the middle of the desert. Additionally, Japan is located in the collision point of three tectonic plates (Pacific Ring of Fire) so any movement between the three plates may pose a danger towards the country. Another important point is that natural disasters are considered a very likely external threat for most companies located in Japan. We can reduce the damage taken by businesses if they were to allocate production factories to a rural parts of the country. Ultimately, natural disasters are truly inevitable but the closest thing to avoidance is to reduce the damage that can be received.