Testimonial

Presenting the MURAKAMI Suminao Award 2023

It is my great pleasure to present the MURAKAMI Suminao Award to Prof. Fumihiko Imamura.

Since the first issue of JDR, Prof. Imamura has published 36 papers and served as a guest editor for three special issues, making significant contributions to JDR over the years. In addition to his contributions to the field of tsunami disaster, he has actively promoted various joint research projects and international symposiums, particularly after the Great East Japan Earthquake. He has been recognized for his contributions to international academic exchange in various research fields. In recognition of these contributions, the JDR Editorial Board has decided to grant him the MURAKAMI Suminao Award.

I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Imamura for his great contributions and congratulate him on winning the award.

Message from the Winner

I would like to express my deepest gratitude for receiving the 2023 MURAKAMI Suminao Award for Disaster Research. Since I reported on the research and analysis results of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in the first issue of JDR, I have published 36 papers on tsunami science and engineering, including papers on emergency responses, warning systems, and public awareness and education. The 2004 tsunami was a devastating one that hit an area where tsunami countermeasures had not been sufficiently implemented in the Indian Ocean, so it caused tremendous damage. It is said that more than 250,000 people, including foreign tourists, were killed. Seven years later, Japan suffered cascading disasters and effects, including an M9 earthquake and a huge tsunami, causing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident on the Pacific side of the Tohoku region of Japan. Interdisciplinary research covering cutting-edge science and technology is necessary in order to solve many problems and issues and to transfer the experiences and lessons learned at that time.It is a great honor for me to be able to report on the results of these activities through the JDR, and I would like to express again my gratitude to the JDR for bestowing such recognition. With this award, I would like to do further research related to disaster and risk reduction and natural disaster science, disseminating the results through journals.

Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce that the MURAKAMI Suminao Award for Disaster Research and the JDR annual awards (the JDR Award for the Most Cited Paper, the JDR Award for the Most Downloaded Article, and the JDR Award for the Most Contributory Reviewer) of 2023 have been decided by the JDR editorial boards. The award ceremony was held on December 6, 2023 at Gakushikaikan, Tokyo, Japan. We congratulate the winners and sincerely wish for future success.

Message from the Winner

Thank you very much for this wonderful award. I am very honored to receive this award in the “most cited” category, which means that my research has been widely recognized, and I am very grateful to the JDR editorial board, reviewers, and co-authors.

The paper that received this honor was “Predictability of Precipitation Caused by Linear Precipitation Systems During the July 2017 Northern Kyushu Heavy Rainfall Event Using a Cloud-Resolving Numerical Weather Prediction Model.” This paper evaluates the predictability of a numerical weather prediction model and presents several key issues regarding the predictability of the 2017 torrential rains in northern Kyushu, rains which caused extensive damage. In particular, we showed that the stagnation of the linear precipitation systems (LPS) was difficult to predict and that the maximum rainfall was underestimated.

Our paper did not present a breakthrough finding; however, I believe that along with the increase in disasters caused by LPS after the publication of the paper, interest in research on forecasting LPS increased. Notably, our focus on the difficult-to-predict case attracted a great deal of attention and many citations. In the project that followed the publication of this paper, research was conducted on how to utilize such uncertain forecast information for disaster prevention, which led to the acquisition of a patent and the publication of new papers.

In the future, we will continue our research to improve the accuracy of forecasting not only LPS but also other extreme weather events, such as guerrilla rainstorms, thunderstorms, and hailstorms. We will also seek ways to utilize this forecast information for disaster prevention, with the aim of contributing to society.iving force that pushes us to continue to do research. We hope the JDR continues to be an important academic platform for the exchange of cutting-edge disaster research.

Message from the Winner

It is my pleasure to be recognized and receive an award from the Journal of Disaster Research for the article “Stampede Events and Strategies for Crowd Management,” published in November 2019. From the perspective of risk management, stampede events in public facilities are vital issues that occur during evacuations in urban areas due to the vulnerabilities that come with extremely high levels of urbanization.

As we have done since beginning our research, we will continue to focus on the issue of the evacuation of basic infrastructures, such as metro systems, domed stadiums, exhibition halls, etc., to explore strategies for disaster mitigation and deal with the relevant risk management, all based on 2D and 3D simulation methodology. I am sorry that cannot take part in the awards ceremony due to my teaching duties in my graduate school, but I deeply appreciate the reward given by the academic committee of the JDR.

I would also like to express my grateful appreciation for the support of my co-authors.

Thank you once again for the honor bestowed by the committee members, and we will continue working hard in the field of disaster management.

Message from the Winner

It is my honor to be awarded for the Most Downloaded Article 2023 by the Journal of Disaster Research. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the other two authors and to all the people who have cooperated with our research by giving their advice and comments.

Stampede incidents have occurred frequently in recent years, and how to prevent injuries and deaths in the crowds has become an important issue. We based the article we wrote on the lessons learned from stampede incidents in the past, verifying the significant factors involved in stampede incidents and the relationship between the crowds and spatial aspects through simulated case studies. We found in our research that knowing how to provide spatial and event planning for the safety of the crowds in the evacuation events would be necessary. In urban areas of Taiwan, there are large events in venues such as the Taipei Dome. We put our effort into continuing to discuss the application of evacuating planning, not only in terms of safety exits and evacuation routes but also suitable spatial design and management for the crowds in the buildings or areas in several situations, such as earthquakes or fires.

The number of times this paper has been downloaded since its publication four years ago shows us its practicality for both the academic and non-academic communities. We would like to express our appreciation to the people who read and supported this paper around the world; they provide a driving force that pushes us to continue to do research. We hope the JDR continues to be an important academic platform for the exchange of cutting-edge disaster research.

Message from the Winner

I am Fang-Ming Kuo, a Secretary Officer in the National Fire Agency of the Ministry of the Interior. I have been working for the National Fire Agency (NFA) for about 13 years, since graduating in 2010 from the Department of Fire Science of the Central Police University.

Evacuation safety plays an important role in fire engineering design, and that is why I became interested in stampedes and started to do related research. As we have learned from case studies, human stampedes often occur at the exits and the neck nodes of crowd movements. Though their frequency is quite low, stampede events may cause a large number of casualties, and they have unimaginable negative social impact on public psychology. This was seen in 2022 after the stampede in Itaewon, Korea.

I deeply appreciate that the Journal of Disaster Research has awarded us this prize. It is also an honor to receive an award together with Professor Chun-Hao Shao. It is recognition that we have truly worked hard on this, and it encourages us to continue doing so in the future.

Message from the Winner

I am honored to receive the JDR Award for the Most Contributory Reviewer 2023. I understand that giving awards to reviewers is rare, even among academic journals.

I am on the editorial board of a different journal, and I have learned that securing excellent reviewers will ensure the quality of the journal and will be an important factor in determining its future success or decline. Considering this, I am very happy that I have been asked to serve as a reviewer for the JDR many times, as it means that I am trusted as one of its excellent reviewers.

The JDR is an interdisciplinary journal, so people from various fields, such as science, engineering, and social sciences and humanities submit papers. When I review a paper, one of my criteria is whether the paper is written in a way that someone from a different field can understand it. I hope that the papers published in the JDR will not be “closed” papers within one field but will instead elucidate disaster phenomena from various fields. By combining the results of each field, the JDR creates synergistic effects and produces innovative and excellent research results in disaster research.

I believe that the JDR’s bestowing this award on me is a signal that “We will continue to request peer reviews, so please continue to accept our requests.“ I would indeed like to continue to contribute to the further development of the JDR as a journal that publishes high-quality papers, and I sincerely thank the JDR very much for this prestigious award.

Acknowledgments

The Journal of Disaster Research is full peer review journal. Our review process is supported by a large number of volunteer reviewers. The editorial board would like to appreciate their efforts and cooperation to maintain, to improve, and to refine the quality of the journal. We would list up the reviewers who have worked in Volume 18, in order to express our sincere gratitude for their cooperation. We would also hope their further support to our journal.

Reviewers for Vol.18

AKIHIRO, Hashimoto   ASADA, Yoshikazu   BORET, Sébastien Penmellen   CEFERINO, Luis
CHAN, Chung-Han   CHANG, Kuo-Hao   CHEN, Kate Huihsuan   DULAM, Rithika
DA SILVA, Paula F.   EGASHIRA, Shinji   ESCRIBANO MACIAS, Jose Javier   FUJIMOTO, Kazuo
FUJINO, Hidenori   FUKUSHIMA, Yo   GOHDA, Eiichi   HADA, Yasunori
HAMABATA, Takashi   HAYASHI, Haruo   HAYASHI, Shin-ichiro   HAYASHI, Shunji
HAYASHIDA, Takumi   HAYES, Josh   HEIDARZADEH, Mohammad   HIGUCHI, Chigusa
HIRAGA, Yusuke   HIRAYAMA, Nagahisa   HO, Lih-Der   HOSOKAWA, Masafumi
IIJIMA, Yoshio   IMAI, Hiroshi   IMAMURA, Daisuke   INABA, Yohei
INOGUCHI, Munenari   IOUALALEN, Mansour   ISE, Tadashi   ISHIWATARI, Mikio
ITO, Hiro-o   IWASAKI, Emiko   JIAMSANGUANWONG, Arisara   JIBIKI, Yasuhito
JOHNSTON, David   KACHI, Noriyasu   KAJITANI, Yoshio   KANEKO, Kensaku
KANNO, Taro   KARAKI, Hideaki   KARIKAWA, Daisuke   KASAI, Kazuhiko
KATAYAMA, Kazuhiko   KATO, Takaaki   KATSUHAMA, Yoshihiro   KAWAIKE, Kenji
KAWASAKI, Akiyuki   KAWATA, Yoshiaki   KIMURA, Reo   KINOSHITA, Atsuhiko
KISHIDA, Tadahiro   KOBAYASHI, Nobumichi   KOKOGAWA, Tomohiro   KOMORI, Daisuke
KONDO, Shinya   KONO, Tatsuhito   KOSHIMURA, Shunichi   KOSHIYAMA, Kenji
KOTANI, Hitomu   KOYAMA, Tomofumi   KURAOKA, Senro   KUSUNOKI, Koichi
KUWATA, Yasuko   LEE, Hsiang-Chieh   LEELAWAT, Natt   LI, Weisen
LIU, Yi-Chung Gloria   LUBASHEVSKIY, Vasily   LÓPEZ BÁTIZ, Oscar   MAEDA, Masaki
MAKI, Norio   MARUYAMA, Yoshihisa   MAS, Erick   MASUDA, Satoru
MASUDA, Yukihiro   MATSUDA, Kazuhiro   MATSUKAWA, Anna   MATSUOKA, Takayasu
MIYAJIMA, Masakatsu   MIYAKE, Hiroe   MIYAMOTO, Takashi   MIYOSHI, Shin-ichi
MIZUNO, Masayuki   MIZUYAMA, Takahisa   MORIGUCHI, Shuji   MORRIS, John F.
MOTOMURA, Kazushi   MUKAI, Yoichi   MURAO, Osamu   MUTREJA, Ankur
NAGAMATSU, Shingo   NAKAMURA, Takeshi   NAKANO, Genta   NAKASHIMA, Tadayoshi
NAKATANI, Kana   NAMEGAYA, Yuichi   NISHIKAWA, Satoru   NOJIMA, Nobuoto
NONOSE, Kohei   OCHI, Sae   OCHIAI, Tsutomu   OHKUSA, Yasushi
OHORI, Michihiro   OKA, Kohei   OKUYAMA, Junko   ONO, Takahiro
ONO, Yuichi   OTHMAN, Marini   OTSUYAMA, Kensuke   OZEKI, Toshihiro
PEÑA FIGUEROA, Edgar Armando   PRIBADI, Krishna Suryanto   PULIDO, Nelson   RAHAYU, Harkunti Pertiwia
SADOHARA, Satoru   SAITO, Taiki   SAKAI, Naoki   SAKAMOTO, Mayumi
SANDIKKAYA, Mustafa Abdullah   SATAKE, Kenji   SATO, Daiki   SATO, Keiichi
SATO, Nobuteru   SATO, Shosuke   SATO, Tadayuki   SAWADA, Masahiro
SEKIGUCHI, Toru   SELVA, Jacopo   SHARPANSKYKH, Alexei   SHEN, Su-min
SHINODA, Sumio   SHRESTHA, Badri Bhakta   SUTAPA, I Wayan   SUZUKI, Shingo
SUZUKI, Takanobu   TABATA, Kentaro   TAKAGI, Ryota   TAKAGI, Tatsuya
TAKARADA, Shinji   TAKIGUCHI, Katsuki   TAMEGURI, Takeshi   TAMURA, Keiko
TANAKA, Kenji   TANAKA, Satoshi   TATSUKI, Shigeo   TOUGE, Yoshiya
TSUBAKI, Michihiro   TSUCHIYA, Satoshi   TSUJI, Yoshinobu   TSUKAHARA, Kenichi
UEDA, Kimi   UKAWA, Motoo   WANG, Baoshan   WATABE, Kazuhito
WATANABE, Kenji   WATANABE, Toshiki   WATAYA, Eiko   YAMAGUCHI, Hiromichi
YAMANAKA, Hiroyasu   YAMAOKA, Koshun   YAMASAKI, Eiichi   YAMAZAKI, Fumio
YAMAZAKI, Takeshi   YASUDA, Nario   YOKOTA, Kenji   YOKOYAMA, Hitoshi
YORIFUJI, Takashi   YOSHIDA, Haruka   YOSHIDA, Satoshi   YOSHIDA, Yuki
YOSHIDA, Yutaka   YOSHIKAWA, Yasuhiro   YUKUTAKE, Yohei   YÜCEMEN, Mehmet Semih

Message from the Winner

We are truly humbled and deeply honored to have been chosen as recipients of the JACIII Best Paper Awards for 2023. This recognition is not only a testament to our team’s dedication and hard work but also a reflection of the collective efforts and encouragement from the wider research community. We would like to extend our profound gratitude to the esteemed members of the JACIII Editorial Committee, the dedicated administrative staff, the meticulous reviewers, and every individual who has supported and championed this journal.
The awarded papers focus on adapting the widely-used techniques in explainable AI, Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM), to address regression problems. Moreover, they address significant challenges of deep learning-based gaze estimation algorithms: the black-box problem.
Through these studies, we believe we have expanded the applicability of explainable AI and contributed to the development of AI systems that humans can trust.
We anticipate that the domain of human-centered AI will continue to expand, and the fields exploring these areas will become increasingly diverse. Journals such as the JACIII, which cover a broad range of topics from foundational to applied research, will undoubtedly grow in significance for researchers like us.
We are committed to advancing research of the highest caliber and meeting the expectations of all stakeholders. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for these prestigious awards.

Message from the Winner

Hello fellow researchers and academics,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the JACIII and Fuji Technology Press for publishing my paper and giving me the prestigious award of “Young Researcher Award 2023.” It is a privilege and an honor for my work to be showcased in the JACIII and to present at the associated CCS conference. Our paper, “LSTM Network Classification of Dexterous Individual Finger Movements,” was the first that was produced as part of my research into using LSTM networks to classify sEMG signals. Typically, this type of network has been applied to natural language processing or other sequential data sequences, but we have applied it to bio-signal classification. This was the first step toward achieving our goal of developing a system that can classify complex hand gestures and other grasping movements for potential application with anthropomorphic robotic hands.
Furthermore, I would like to thank the team of editors that provided me with crucial feedback throughout the submission process and helped me to refine my submission. I would also like thank everyone who read my paper and found it helpful or of some interest. Finally, I wish to thank my family for supporting me throughout this process and my supervisors for helping me write a paper worthy of such an award.

Message from the Winner

I am immensely proud to have received the JACIII Young Researcher Award 2023. I would like to express my gratitude to the JACIII editorial board, award committee members, and co-authors.
Our paper, entitled “Automatic Neonatal Alertness State Classification Based on Facial Expression Recognition,” proposes a video image analysis and machine learning classification system, based sleep-wake states, for neonates in neonatal intensive care unit.
Based on Brazelton’s alertness definitions, the proposed method uses machine learning to categorize sleep-wake states into four or six classes. Since the input data are the video images of neonates, the proposed method extracts the histogram of oriented gradients (HoG) or the gradient feature from each slice, and these are then merged in an average merge or a standard deviation merge. The experimental results show that the weighted support vector machine classifier using the HoG feature and average merging achieves the highest classification performance.
We are currently working on developing a hybrid model that combines facial expression and body motion for the alertness state classification. Lastly, I am considering continuing our collaborative research in the medical engineering field in the future.

Testimonial

Presenting the MURAKAMI Suminao Award 2022

It is our great pleasure to present the MURAKAMI Suminao Award to Prof. Hideaki Karaki.

Professor Karaki has made outstanding contributions to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) as an important member of the JDR editorial board for a long time. He is Professor Emeritus, in the Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences, at The University of Tokyo, and he is a former president of Foundation of Food Safety and Security. His major contributions to the JDR have been in the area of medical disasters such as infectious disease pandemics. The JDR covers various kinds of disasters, both natural and man-made, such as geological, hydrological, or microbial disasters, and medical or infectious disease disasters are also important to mention. His excellent manuscripts have also been in the JDR. Furthermore, he has comprehensive knowledge of various fields in addition to his field of specialization. He has had a long career as an editor of the JDR, and his opinions in editorial meetings have always been valuable.

Thus, his contributions to the JDR make him very deserving of the MURAKAMI Suminao Award.

I wish to thank to Professor Karaki for his contributions and to congratulate him as the winner of the Award.

Message from the Winner

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the MURAKAMI Suminao Award for Disaster Research 2022 and the JDR Award for the Most Contributory Reviewer 2022. It has been a great pleasure to serve on the editorial board for many years, and I have had the opportunity to talk with distinguished members of the editorial board who specialize in natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods, which are completely outside my field of expertise, biology and medicine, and who have greatly broadened my perspective.

The saying goes that disasters come just when you forget about them, but we have been in a situation recently where disasters come before we forget about them. There have been so many disasters: the panic that began with the discovery of cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Japan in 2001, the simultaneous terrorist attacks in the U.S. and the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan around the same time, the poisoning of frozen dumplings made in China in 2007, the Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011, the COVID-19 problem that has continued from 2019 to the present, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 and the resulting energy crisis and food shortages, as well as earthquakes, torrential rains, landslides, and typhoons that have occurred every year.

The purpose of JDR, I believe, would be to stimulate research on these disasters, thereby providing a basis for the development of technologies for disaster prevention and control. In this regard, I have been concerned about the distance between science and technology: in the case of COVID-19, research on the causative virus, combined with messenger RNA vaccine technology, led to the fastest vaccine ever developed. On the other hand, the development of a cure has been slow, and the only treatment for pneumonia has been the old-fashioned one. Recently, antiviral drugs have been developed, but their efficacy has yet to be determined.

There are many reasons for the distance between science and technology, and I hope that the research results published in JDR will play a role in reducing that distance.

Congratulations!

We are pleased to announce that the MURAKAMI Suminao Award for Disaster Research and the JDR annual awards (the JDR Award for the Most Cited Paper, the JDR Award for the Most Downloaded Article, and the JDR Award for the Most Contributory Reviewer) of 2022 have been decided by the JDR editorial boards. The award ceremony was held on November 30, 2022 in hybrid style (both on-site and online). We congratulate the winners and sincerely wish for future success.

Message from the Winner

It is my honor to receive the JDR Award for the Most Cited Paper 2022. I would sincerely like to thank the JDR editorial office, reviewers, and my co-author, Professor Yamazaki, for their support.

The paper that received this honor was “Extraction of Collapsed Buildings in the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake Using Multi-Temporal PALSAR-2 Data.” In this work, we proposed three change indices for evaluating the damage to buildings in Mashiki Town, Kumamoto Prefecture that were severely affected by the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. The indices were calculated from two pre- and one co-event ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 images. The most valid factor was adopted by comparing the extracted results with the reference data from field surveys. The factor was then applied to larger affected areas of Kumamoto City and its surroundings. In this work, the ALOS-2 proved to very effective in recognizing damages caused by nature disasters.

This work has been cited by 21 journal papers as of December 2022. I am grateful to the editorial board of the JDR for affording us the opportunity to have this work published. We hope our results in this paper will help even more scientific works. Encouraged by this award, we will continue to conduct future investigations to further disaster prevention and management.

Message from the Winner

We are very honored to receive the prestigious JDR Award for the Most Cited Paper 2022. The winning paper, “Real-Time Tsunami Prediction System Using DONET,” discusses a system that uses data from the Dense Oceanfloor Network system for Earthquakes and Tsunamis (DONET), which was installed in the rupture areas of the 1944 Tonankai and 1946 Nankai earthquakes in order to instantly generate and visualize tsunami prediction information. The forecast information from this system consists of tsunami arrival time, maximum tsunami height, tsunami inundation area, and inundation depth distribution. The system, which visualizes and distributes forecast information for areas where users need it as a supplement to the tsunami information provided nationwide by the Japan Meteorological Agency, has been introduced in Wakayama Prefecture, Mie Prefecture, Chiba Prefecture, and the city of Owase, as well as by Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. After DONET was installed in the Tonankai rupture area, we were considering the possibility of using DONET data regionally, and we developed the system as results of discussions with Wakayama Prefecture and Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. Under the concept that the users themselves would be operating the system, we intended to make the system as simple and easy to understand as possible, and to reduce costs by minimizing the number of hardware units. We also considered making the system flexible and scalable, recognizing that each user has a different way of how to use the tsunami forecast information. We were able to receive this award thanks to the cooperation of the people who were involved in many discussions with us during the process of establishing the concept. We will not become complacent going forward, but will continue to improve our system in ways that reflect the opinions of the users. We would like to thank everyone who has cited this paper with their interests.

Message from the Winner

I am very honored to receive the JDR Award for the Most Cited Paper 2022, and I am very grateful to the editorial board and staff of the Journal of Disaster Research. The paper, “Total Electron Content Observations by Dense Regional and Worldwide International Networks of GNSS,” reviews our research related to ionospheric observations using GNSS receiver networks. Since the late 1990s, the rapid development of GNSS receiver networks has made it possible to observe the ionosphere in two dimensions with high temporal and spatial resolution, revealing new features of various ionospheric phenomena. Ionospheric observation using GNSS receiver networks has become an indispensable method of observation in the space weather field. After the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, it was revealed that various atmospheric waves excited by earthquakes and tsunamis propagated up to the ionosphere and caused ionospheric variations, suggesting the possibility of tsunami monitoring using ionospheric observations. We are also working on the standardization of ionospheric data formatting to achieve even higher spatial resolution and wider coverage of ionospheric observation using GNSS receiver networks through international cooperation. Encouraged by this award, we will continue our research and development efforts with a view to applying this technology not only to space weather but also to natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.

Message from the Winner

We are very honored to receive the JDR Award for the Most Downloaded Article 2022, a new award from the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR).

After the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake, it is now said that a magnitude 9-class earthquake could occur in the Nankai Trough, and it is necessary for us to know how strong ground motion (shaking) we will experience during such a great earthquake in order to take countermeasures. In this paper, we developed a new seismic motion prediction model that is applicable to M9-class earthquakes. We did this by adding the strong-motion records of the 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake to the many records accumulated by various organizations since the 1950s. We would like to express our gratitude to all the organizations that provided us with their valuable records.

Nearly 10 years have passed since the publication of the paper, and the records accumulated during that time have helped us to recognize the usefulness of our proposed model. We understand that our paper is still being downloaded in large numbers today and that our model is now being used not only in research but also in practice.

As natural disasters occur more frequently in Japan and around the world, we hope that JDR will continue to grow and develop as an international source of useful knowledge on natural disasters.

Acknowledgments

The Journal of Disaster Research is full peer review journal. Our review process is supported by a large number of volunteer reviewers. The editorial board would like to appreciate their efforts and cooperation to maintain, to improve, and to refine the quality of the journal. We would list up the reviewers who have worked in Volume 17, in order to express our sincere gratitude for their cooperation. We would also hope their further support to our journal.

Reviewers for Vol.17
AKITOMI, Shinji   ALBINI, Paola   AMANO, Kensaku   ARAKAWA, Soichi
ASAI, Ayumi   BABA, Toshitaka   BANBA, Michiko   BENIYA, Shohei
BHATTACHARYA, Yasmin   BORET, Sébastien Penmellen   CHARBONNIER, Sylvain J.
CHATTERJEE, Ranit   CHIBA, Tatsuro   CHIBA, Yohei   CHOWDHURY, Shehla
COSTA, Antonio   DEL CARLO, Paola   EBARA, Masaharu   EBINA, Yuichi
EGAWA, Shinichi   FUJIKURA, Ryo   FUJIMI, Toshio   FUJIWARA, Osamu
FUMOTO, Shinichi   FURUMURA, Takashi   FURUYA, Naoyuki   FURUYA, Osamu
GOKON, Hideomi   GRAETTINGER, Alison H.   GRESSE, Marceau   HADA, Yasunori
HAMABATA, Takashi   HAMADA, Morihisa   HANASAKI, Naota   HARADA, Eiji
HASEGAWA, Takeshi   HASHIMOTO, Masakazu   HAYASHI, Haruo   HAYASHI, Isao
HAYASHI, Shunji   HIRAMATSU, Yoshihiro   HONJO, Yuichi   HORIE, Kei
HOSOKAWA, Masafumi   IALNAZOV, Dimiter Savov   ICHIKAWA, Yutaka   ICHIKO, Taro
IGUCHI, Masato   IIJIMA, Yoshio   IMAMURA, Daisuke   INAGAKI, Keiko
INO, Eri   INOGUCHI, Munenari   ISHIHARA, Ryoga   ISHII, Kensuke
ISHIWATARI, Mikio   ISHIZAKI, Yasuo   IWATA, Tomotaka   IYER, Monica
IZBEKOV, Pavel   IZUMI, Takako   JEONG, Byeongpyo   KAI, Tatsuro
KAMITANI, Wataru   KANDA, Wataru   KANEKO, Shinji   KANO, Yasuyuki
KARAKI, Hideaki   KATAYAMA, Kazuhiko   KATO, Naoyuki   KAWABATA, Takuya
KAWAIKE, Kenji   KAWASAKI, Akiyuki   KAWASAKI, Kota   KHOMSAN, Ali
KIMURA, Reo   KITAHARA, Kei   KOBAYASHI, Nobumichi   KODAKA, Akira
KOMATSU, Toshimitsu   KOMORI, Daisuke   KOSHIMURA, Shunichi   KOSHIYAMA, Kenji
KOUMOTO, Hiroko   KOYAMA, Maki   KOYAMA, Masato   KOYAMA, Takao
KOYAMA, Tomofumi   KURODA, Teruo   LEE, Yanling Sophia   MAENO, Fukashi
MAGILL, Christina   MAKI, Norio   MALY, Elizabeth   MANEE, Donpapob
MANNEN, Kazutaka   MARUYA, Hiroaki   MATEO, Cherry May   MATSUKAWA, Anna
MATSUSHIMA, Nobuo   MATSUSHIMA, Takeshi   MCCLAIN, Shanna N.   MINAMI, Takuto
MIURA, Hiroyuki   MIWA, Takahiro   MIYABUCHI, Yasuo   MIYAMOTO, Kuniaki
MIYOSHI, Shin-ichi   MOE, Idham   MORITA, Daichi   MORITA, Masaaki
MORITA, Yuichi   MOTOMURA, Kazushi   MOTOYUI, Shojiro   MUHARI, Abdul
MUKAI, Kengo   MULYASARI, Farah   MUNEKANE, Hiroshi   MURAO, Osamu
NAGAI, Daisuke   NAGAMATSU, Shingo   NAGAMI, Kozo   NAGATA, Toshimitsu
NAGATSUMA, Tsutomu   NAKANO, Genta   NAKAU, Koji   NAKAYA, Hiroaki
NAKAYAMA, Keisuke   NAKAYAMA, Mikiyasu   NASU, Masao   NISHIKAWA, Satoru
NOJIMA, Nobuoto   NUMADA, Muneyoshi   OGINO, Kaoru   OHARA, Miho
OHKUSA, Yasushi   OHMI, Shiro   OHNO, Ayumu   OHTOMO, Shoji
OKAMATSU, Akiko   OKAZAKI, Taichiro   OKUNO, Mitsuru   ONO, Takahiro
ONO, Yuichi   OTSUYAMA, Kensuke   OZEKI, Toshihiro   PROIETTI, Cristina
PUTIRKA, Keith   RAMAMURTHY, Thandavarayan   RANGSIWANICHPONG, Prem
RASMY, Mohamed   RIAHI, Vahid   ROCHE, Olivier   SAITO, Takeshi
SAKAI, Shinichi   SAKAMOTO, Maiko   SAKAMOTO, Mayumi   SAKATA, Tomohiko
SARARIT, Titaya   SASAKI, Daisuke   SATAKE, Kenji   SATO, Eiichi
SATO, Shosuke   SATO, Tomonori   SAWADA, Masahiro   SAYAMA, Takahiro
SCOLLO, Simona   SHAW, Rajib   SHIMAMOTO, Tadashi   SHIMIZU, Yasuyuki
SHINODA, Sumio   SHIOBARA, Hajime   SHIOTA, Sumiko   SHOJI, Daigo
SUGIMORI, Reiko   SUGIURA, Mikiko   SUMARWAN, Ujang   SUMI, Tetsuya
SUPPASRI, Anawat   SURJAN, Akhilesh   SUZUKI, Shingo   SUZUKI, Yujiro
TADOKORO, Keiichi   TAISNE, Benoit   TAKAGI, Tatsuya   TAKAHASHI, Makoto
TAKENOUCHI, Kensuke   TAKEUCHI, Shingo   TAMURA, Keiko   TANAKA, Kenji
TANAKA, Ryo   TANAKA, Satoshi   TANIOKA, Yuichiro   TATSUKI, Shigeo
TEBAKARI, Taichi   TERUMOTO, Kiyomine   TSUDA, Toshihide   TSUKAHARA, Kenichi
UCHIMURA, Taro   UESAWA, Shimpei   UMEMOTO, Michitaka   USUI, Yoshiya
UY, Noralene   VINAYAVEKHIN, Sukrit   WAKAZUKI, Yasutaka   WANG, Da-Hong
WANG, Qingyu   WANG, Qinxue   WATABE, Kazuhito   WATANABE, Kenji
WATANABE, Yasuharu   WRIGHT, Heather M.   YAMAMOTO, Takahiro
YAMAMOTO CHIKASADA, Naotaka   YAMANAKA, Hiroyasu   YAMASHIKI, Yosuke Alexandre
YAMASHIRO, Tetsu   YAMASHITA, Tetsuo   YASUDA, Atsushi   YOKOTA, Kenji
YOSHII, Takumi   YOSHIKAWA, Yasuhiro   ZHAO, Chongjin

Message from the Winner

It is our great honor to be selected for the JACIII’s Best Paper Award 2022, and we would like to express our sincere appreciation to the JACIII editorial board and office members, the reviewers, and all the supporters of this journal. Our paper, “Three-Mode Fuzzy Co-Clustering Based on Probabilistic Concept and Comparison with FCM-Type Algorithms,” was first motivated by our desire to utilize three-mode co-occurrence information in collaborative recommendations, such that personalized food recommendations can be realized by considering not only user-food preference tendencies but also intrinsic user-ingredient preferences. In the proposed method, fuzzy partitioning is achieved by introducing a probabilistic concept into a fuzzy c-means type of clustering, and the degree of partition fuzziness can be tuned through comparison with the fuzziness degree of probabilistic models. The proposed method is therefore supported by the advantages of both fuzzy set theory and probability theory, and it is expected to develop a new direction in fuzzy-probability hybridization.
Finally, we would like to once again express our sincere gratitude to all those involved in the JACIII journal, and we hope that it will continue to publish papers that pioneer new fields of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics.

Message from the Winner

Thank you to the JACIII editorial board for giving me the award. I am honored to receive it. This paper is thanks to the guidance of my teacher, Professor Hirota.
This paper, “Path Planning Based on Improved Hybrid A* Algorithm,” is a study of the Hybrid A* algorithm. In this paper, the artificial potential field (APF) concept is applied in order to optimize the paths generated by the Hybrid A* algorithm. The generated path not only satisfies the non-holonomic constraints of the vehicle but is also smooth, and it keeps a comfortable distance from the obstacle at the same time.
Once again, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this paper and made it possible for me to receive this award. I hope the JACIII journal has more and more excellent papers in the future.

Message from the Winner

I am truly honored to have been selected for the prestigious JACIII Young Researcher Award 2022. I sincerely appreciate the co-authors, the editorial office of JACIII, the reviewers, and the laboratory members.
It has been almost three years since 2019 when we worked on this paper related to recommendation algorithms. Companies such as YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix, which are also the background of our research, have increased in scale since that time, and content on the Internet continues to grow at a phenomenal pace.
In this context, the influence of recommendation algorithms is significant, and expectations for their performance improvement seem to be escalating day by day.
This research is to create recommendation data using a generative system that is based on graph convolution. Generative systems have already achieved remarkable success in pictures and photographs, and I believe their application fields will further expand.
We can also expect further developments in the field of recommendation systems. I am confident that our paper in the JACIII will contribute to the future development of this field.
Once again, it is a great pleasure for me to receive this prestigious award for our research, and I would like to express my deepest gratitude.
I believe this award and commendation will be a great encouragement to all students and researchers who are working on the recommendation algorithm.
I also wish for the development of the JACIII and the field of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics.

Testimonial

Presenting the Seventh JDR Award

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), it is my great honor and pleasure to present the 2021 JDR Award to Prof. and Dr. Suminao Murakami, or “Murakami Sensei.” Murakami Sensei has served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the JDR for the past 16 years, since 2006. The JDR has now published more than 100 issues, becoming recognized as the leading Japan-based, international online peer-review journal on disaster risk reduction for all hazards except war, and Murakami Sensei has always been its greatest contributor. The Editorial Board reluctantly respected Murakami Sensei’s decision to resign from the position of Editor-in-Chief, but it has unanimously agreed to rename the JDR Award to the MURAKAMI Suminao Award for Disaster Research from 2022 on. The Journal of Disaster Research will continue its best efforts “to reduce the horrors of disaster through information,” as Murakami Sensei and Takiguchi Sensei wrote in the Message from the Editors-in-Chief in the first issue of the JDR.

Congratulations!

We announce that the Seventh JDR Award was won by Prof. Suminao Murakami, Laboratory of Urban Safety Planning. We congratulate the winner and sincerely wish for future success.

Acknowledgements

The Journal of Disaster Research is full peer review journal. Our review process is supported by a large number of volunteer reviewers. The editorial board would like to appreciate their efforts and cooperation to maintain, to improve, and to refine the quality of the journal. We would list up the reviewers who have worked in Volume 16, in order to express our sincere gratitude for their cooperation. We would also hope their further support to our journal.

Reviewers for Vol.16
ABE, Shinro   AKOH, Ryosuke   AMAGUCHI, Hideo   AMATYAKUL, Puwis
AOO, Ken   BABA, Yasuyuki   BHATTACHARYA, Yasmin   BORET, Sébastien Penmellen
BOSSU, Rémy   BUI, Kien-Trinh Thi   CAI, Fei   CHENG, Daiwei
CHIKASADA, Naotaka   DO, Tuan-Nghia   DOSHIDA, Shoji   DROLET, Julie L.
DUONG, Nguyen Thanh   ELGAML, Abdelaziz   FUJIMI, Toshio   FUJITA, Koichi
FUJITA, Masaharu   FURUYA, Takashi   GERSTER, Julia   GOTO, Satoshi
HA, Nguyen Duc   HADA, Yasunori   HAGA, Mitsuru   HAMABATA, Takashi
HARADA, Kenji   HASHIMOTO, Masakazu   HAYASHI, Haruo   HAYASHI, Isao
HAYASHI, Kazunori   HAYASHI, Shunji   HIGAKI, Daisuke   HIRATA, Naoshi
HISADA, Yoshiaki   HITOKOTO, Masayuki   HORI, Tomoharu   HORIE, Kei
HOSOKAWA, Masafumi   HUNG, Hoang Viet   ICHIKO, Taro   ICHIMURA, Tsuyoshi
IIDA, Tomoyuki   IIZUKA, Akiko   IKEDA, Hirotaka   IKEDA, Syunsuke
IMAI, Kentaro   IMAMURA, Daisuke   IMAMURA, Fumihiko   IMURA, Noriko
IMURA, Ryusuke   INOGUCHI, Munenari   ISHIWATARI, Mikio   ISHIZUKA, Mayumi
ISKANDER, John   IUCHI, Kanako   IWATA, Tomotaka   IZUMI, Norihiro
JEONG, Byeongpyo   JIANG, Yujing   KAGIYAMA, Tsuneomi   KAMITANI, Wataru
KARAKI, Hideaki   KATAYAMA, Kazuhiko   KATO, Takaaki   KAWAIKE, Kenji
KAWAMURA, Akira   KAWASAKI, Akiyuki   KAWASAKI, Koji   KAZAMA, So
KIHARA, Naoto   KIKU, Hiroyoshi   KIMURA, Reo   KIMURA, Takashi
KOARAI, Mamoru   KOBAYASHI, Hideyuki   KOBAYASHI, Nobumichi   KOBAYASHI, Wataru
KOJIRO, Suzuki   KOMORI, Daisuke   KOMORI, Jiro   KONDO, Shinya
KOSHIMURA, Shunichi   KOUKETSU, Takeharu   KOUMOTO, Hiroko   KOYAMA, Maki
KOYAMA, Tomofumi   KUMAGAI, Tomohiko   KUWAGAKI, Reiko   LAN, Nguyen Chau
LE, Thi Thanh Thuy   LIMPRASERT, Wasit   LIN, Meei-Ling   MAKI, Norio
MALY, Elizabeth   MARUYA, Hiroaki   MAS, Erick   MATSUKAWA, Anna
MATSUSHITA, Osamu   MATSUTOMI, Hideo   MATSUYAMA, Masafumi   MAYUMI, Takayuki
MILDON, Zoe   MILLAR, Paul   MISAWA, Ayanori   MITCHELL, Andrew
MITSUHASHI, Toshiharu   MIYAMOTO, Mamoru   MIYAMOTO, Takumi   MIYOSHI, Shin-Ichi
MIZOGUCHI, Atsuko   MIZUTANI, Tetsuya   MORITA, Daichi   MORITA, Kouichi
MOTOMURA, Kazushi   MOTOYOSHI, Tadahiro   MURAKAMI, Hitomi   MURAKAMI, Masahiro
NAGAMATSU, Shingo   NAKADA, Setsuya   NAKAI, Fuko   NAKAJIMA, Takako
NAKANISHI, Daisuke   NAKANO, Genta   NAKAYAMA, Mikiyasu   NAKAZAWA, Shoji
NARA, Yumiko   NASU, Masao   NATSUHORI, Masahiro   NGUYEN, David
NGUYEN, Manh Duc   NISHIKAWA, Satoru   NISHIYAMA, Satoshi   NOHARA, Daisuke
NOJIMA, Nobuoto   ODA, Takashi   OHARA, Miho   OHKUSA, Yasushi
OHMI, Shiro   OHSUMI, Michio   OHTOMO, Shoji   OHTSUKA, Rika
OIZUMI, Tsutao   OKADA, Norio   OKAMOTO, Keinosuke   OKAYASU, Yuji
OMATSU, Ryo   ONO, Yuichi   ORNTHAMMARATH, Teraphan   OZAKI, Takatsugu
PAL, Indrajit   PAVARANGKOON, Praphan   PHAM, Viet-Anh   SAGARA, Wataru
SAKAKIBARA, Takashi   SAKAMOTO, Mayumi   SAKATA, Tomohiko   SATAKE, Ryoichiro
SATO, Masato   SATO, Shosuke   SATO, Takeshi   SAWADA, Masahiro
SAWADA, Yutaka   SAYAMA, Takahiro   SHAW, Rajib   SHIBASAKI, Tatsuya
SHIBATA, Yu   SHIMAMOTO, Tadashi   SHINICHI, Tosa   SHINODA, Sumio
SHIWAKU, Koichi   SHRIVASTAVA, Sourabh   SUGANO, Taku   SUGAWARA, Daisuke
SUPPASRI, Anawat   SUZUKI, Shingo   TAIRA, Yasuyuki   TAJIMA, Yasuhisa
TAKADA, Yosuke   TAKAGAWA, Tomohiro   TAKAGI, Tatsuya   TAKAHARA, Kohei
TAKAHASHI, Akira   TAKAHASHI, Tomoyuki   TAKEDA, Makoto   TAKENOUCHI, Kensuke
TAKEUCHI, Yukiko   TAKIGUCHI, Katsuki   TAMURA, Keiko   TAMURA, Shuji
TANAKA, Norio   TANAKA, Satoshi   TANGTERMSIRIKUL, Somnuk   TANIGUCHI, Kenji
TATSUKI, Shigeo   TODA, Shinji   TOWHATA, Ikuo   TRAN, Thanh Danh
TRAN, The Viet   TSUDA, Toshihide   TSURUOKA, Hiroshi   TUAN, Nguyen Quang
TUAN, Tran Van   UCHIYAMA, Shoichiro   UDAGAWA, Saneyuki   USHIYAMA, Tomoki
UTSUMI, Nobuyuki   VACHIRATIENCHAI, Chatchai   WADA, Yoshitaka   WAGGONNER, J. David
WANG, Haizhong   WATABE, Kazuhito   WATANABE, Kenji   WATANABE, Ryoichi
WU, Jian-Hong   YAMADA, Ryuji   YAMAGUCHI, Kosei   YAMANAKA, Hiroaki
YAMANAKA, Hiroyasu   YAMASAKI, Takanari   YAMASHIRO, Tetsu   YAMORI, Katsuya
YASUDA, Naotoshi   YEH, Harry   YOKOYAMA, Osamu   YOSHIDA, Satoru
YOSHII, Takumi   YOSHIMOTO, Kazuo   YOSHIMOTO, Mitsuhiro   ZHANG, Hao

Message from the Winner

I am very honored to receive the JACIII Best Paper Award 2021. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editorial board, reviewers, and everyone else who supported this study.
This paper, “Self-Structured Cortical Learning Algorithm by Dynamically Adjusting Columns and Cells,” is a study of the cortical learning algorithm (CLA). CLA is a time-series data prediction algorithm based on the human neocortex, the most important part of human intelligence. In this paper, we propose a method of dynamically increasing or decreasing self-structures, which are called columns and cells and which correspond to human neurons, to adjust them depending on the input data. The proposed method eliminates the need for column and cell parameters, which were previously determined statically. Furthermore, the experimental results on a multistep prediction of real-world power consumption show that the proposed self-structured CLA achieves high prediction accuracy.
Once again, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone involved in publishing this paper and making it possible for me to receive this award. I wish for the future development of scientific research in the field of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics.

Message from the Winner

It is a great honor for me to receive the JACIII Young Researcher Award 2021. This award is the best form of praise for our work and will provide strong stimulation for our passion for research. We are deeply grateful to the JACIII editorial board/office, which made our paper easy to understand and gave it a beautiful layout. We are also grateful to the reviewers, who provided insightful comments that gave our paper more meaning and research value. Next, I wish to give my deepest thanks to my co-authors for their considerable contributions to emotion recognition based on multi-composition deep forest and transferred convolutional neural network. Our many discussions resulted in numerous rewrites, not to mention memories I will cherish forever.
We propose a novel emotion-recognition framework that uses a knowledge-transfer approach to capturing features, employing an improved, deep-forest model to determine the final emotions. The structure of a very deep, convolutional network is learned from ImageNet and is utilized to extract face and emotion features from other data sets, thereby solving the problem of insufficiently labeled samples. These features are then input into a classifier, “multi-composition deep forest,” which consists of 16 forests for facial emotion recognition, to enhance the diversity of the framework. The proposed method does not require that a network be trained with a complex structure, and the decision-tree-based classifier can achieve accurate results with very few parameters, making it easier to implement, train, and apply. Moreover, the classifier can adaptively decide the complexity of its model without iteratively updating parameters.
This truly interesting work is an indication of a new direction in facial emotion recognition. I hope that this paper promotes the development of both transfer learning and deep forest as well as related research, so that facial emotion recognition may find additional applications. The JACIII, the most popular journal of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics, is a powerful platform for sharing ideas and work, and I look forward to its continued improvement and success going forward.

Message from the Winner

I am very honored to receive the JACIII Young Researcher Award 2021. I am deeply grateful to the JACIII editorial office, reviewers, co-authors, and all supporters of this paper, “Object-Oriented 3D Semantic Mapping Based on Instance Segmentation.” This award is highly encouraging to my further study. My research interests include Visual SLAM and Robot Semantic Understanding. This paper proposes an object-oriented, 3D semantic mapping method that combines state-of-the-art, deep-learning-based Instance Segmentation and a Visual SLAM algorithm. The method helps robots not only gain navigation-oriented geometric information about the surrounding environment but also obtain individually-oriented attribute and location information about the objects. An object recognition and target association algorithm applied to continuous image frames is also proposed. The algorithm combines visual SLAM, which uses visual consistency between image frames to promote the results of object matching and recognition over continuous image frames, to improve the accuracy of object recognition. I hope that this study will contribute to the development of both Semantic Robot and Visual SLAM, and that Semantic Visual SLAM will be promoted and widely used in the future. I also wish for the development of the JACIII and the field of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics. Thank you.

Testimonial

Presenting the Sixth JDR Award

It is our great pleasures to present the sixth JDR Award to Prof. Masato Iguchi. Prof. Iguchi, as the top guest editor, published two JDR special issues entitled “Integrated Study on Mitigation of Multimodal disasters caused by Ejection of Volcanic Products.” These special issues, vol.11, no.1 in 2016 and vol.14, no.1 in 2019, were results of a project (2013–2018) of the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS). The second special issue set a record for the highest annual download. In addition, he was the first author or co-author of 11 papers published by JDR in 2019.

Professor Iguchi, as one of most recognized volcanologists in the world, has been leading observation research of active volcanoes as the Director of the Sakurajima Volcano Research Center of Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute. He has promoted geophysical research on volcanic activity not only in Japan but also in Indonesia, evaluating volcanic activity by incorporating the results of material science and demonstrating the effectiveness of long-term, multi-item observations in those processes. He has made a significant contribution to the promotion of Indonesian volcano research, taking over the strong will of former Kyoto University professors, and his contributions have culminated in the aforementioned two special issues.

On behalf of the JDR editorial board, I wish to thank Prof. Iguchi for his efforts and to congratulate him as the winner of the sixth JDR Award.

Message from the Winners

A volcanic eruption is a phenomenon in which ballistic bombs, lapilli, volcanic ash, lava, and gas are discharged. Volcanic ash and gas are carried by the wind, and pyroclastic flows and lava flows are carried away by the force of gravity. These cause disasters of various forms in the areas around volcanoes, sometimes far from eruptive center. Accordingly, volcanic countries, particularly Asian countries such as Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines, have been the scenes of volcanic disasters. We conducted the research project “Integrated study on mitigation of multimodal disasters caused by the ejection of volcanic products” with the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation and other institutes in Indonesia under the SATREPS project from FY2013 to 2018. The aim of the project was to advance volcanic hazard mitigation, and I served as the guest editor of “Special Issue on Integrated Study on Mitigation of Multimodal Disasters Caused by Ejection of Volcanic Products” (2016) and “Special Issue on Integrated Study on Mitigation of Multimodal Disasters Caused by Ejection of Volcanic Products: Part 2” (2019) of the Journal of Disaster Research. The articles in the Special Issues have been downloaded by many researchers. The Special Issues cover many topics related to volcanic disasters, but the main theme is how to forecast real-time volcanic hazards using data monitoring, since it is this monitoring that triggers the issuing of warnings.

I have studied the volcanic activity of Sakurajima, the most active volcano in Japan, for 40 years, primarily to forecast its eruptions. Forecasting the eruptions is not as important as forecasting the hazards and risks posed by volcanic actions. Research done on the mitigation of the volcanic hazards of Sakurajima as well as Indonesian volcanoes has been enhanced by interaction. The cumulative volume of magma stored in the past 100 years indicates that Sakurajima has the potential for a large-scale eruption (VEI > 4). An eruption and its dispersal of volcanic ash in particular would cause a variety of disasters over a wide area, as described in the other issues of Journal of Disaster Research. I hope that the research results will be utilized for hazard mitigation in the event of future large-scale eruptions. The research could be advanced through collaboration with studies aimed at the enhancement of resilience and recovery.

Congratulations!

The Sixth JDR Award ceremony was held online due to COVID-19 on October 6, 2020 and a prize were given to Professor Masato Iguchi, Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan. We congratulate the winner and sincerely wish for future success.

Message from the Winner

It is our honor to receive the JACIII’s Best Paper Award 2020, and we would sincerely like to thank the JACIII editorial office, reviewers, and all who supported this study. The work that received this honor was the “Crystalizing Effect of Simulated Annealing on Boltzmann Machine.” In this work, a method of obtaining an accurate estimate of the posterior distribution of a stacked Boltzmann machine (deep Boltzmann machine) is studied. It applies to simulated annealing the same analogy of the oating zone method that was employed to generate silicon crystals in material science and engineering. Additionally, we investigated the reason behind its capacity for high accuracy, concluding that it comes from the restricting effect of information flow of simulated annealing with non-uniform temperature distribution. Again, we would like to express our appreciation to the JACIII for giving us a chance to publish this work. We hope the results contained in the paper will encourage future scientic work. We will continue to carry out investigations based on these results, further contributing to humanity.

Message from the Winner

I am honored to receive the JACIII Young Researcher Award 2020 and grateful to the JACIII editorial board/office, reviewers, and co-authors of our paper. In this paper, I present a method of classifying swimming styles that is based on Random Forest and Out-of-Bag features selection and uses a single inertial sensor attached to a swimmer. I also develop a support system for swimmers. I hope that our system helps many swimmers to improve their performance. If the paper interests you, please read it. Beside this, I am interested in using adaptive data analysis methods, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, on various kinds of data, such as signals, images, and natural languages.
I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University, Japan since April 2019. Because there are many students interested in soft computing at this institute, I teach them various soft computing methods. I hope that my activities and research help to make for a better society. I also hope for the continued development of soft computing.

Testimonial

Presenting the Fifth JDR Award

It is our great pleasure to present the fifth JDR Award to Dr. Yuichiro Usuda. Dr. Usuda has made outstanding contributions to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) as the guest editor and the author of the JDR’s “Special Issue on NIED Frontier Researches on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2017” in Vol.12 No.5, which has been the most downloaded special issue for the past three years.

Dr. Usuda is a leading scientist in frontier research for natural disaster risk management and resilience in National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED). He is working with researchers of many different disciplines as well as stake-holders in practical devastating disaster management situations. Thus, in his studies, he has been integrating many different disciplines to generate a new intellectual paradigm for managing multi-hazard disasters, such as earthquake disasters combined with meteorological disasters caused by rain, drought, snow, extreme heat or cold, ice, or wind. This is quite important in Japan and other disaster-prone countries, considering today’s global climate change. The special issue is the fruit of his research efforts.

On behalf of the JDR editorial board, I wish to thank Dr. Yuichiro Usuda for his efforts and to congratulate him as the winner of the fifth JDR Award.

Message from the Winners

I would like to express my sincere appreciation for the honor of receiving this prestigious award. The award has been presented to me for the “Special Issue on NIED Frontier Researches on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2017” of JDR Vol.12 No.5, for which I was the guest editor. I heard that this special issue has been the most downloaded over the past three years.

NIED, to which I belong, is an institute that deals with natural disasters comprehensively. Since 2016, we have been working to become a “core organization for innovation in disaster resilience science and technology” as a new seven-year plan. Japan is a country prone to disasters, with many large-scale natural disasters occurring every year. Recent examples would be the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, 2017 Nasu Avalanche, Northern-Kyushu Heavy Rain, 2018 Eruption of Mt. Kusatsu-Shirane, Western-Japan Heavy Rain, Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake, and 2019 Typhoon #19. We should collect “intelligence” related to natural disasters in multiple fields to reduce our disaster risk and improve our resilience.

The Special Issue is a compilation of research results from individual fields. I am elated that the first special issue of NIED has gained such attention. NIED will continue to conduct research across multiple fields. We hope that NIED’s activities will lead to collaboration with many people and that the integration of intelligence will improve disaster resilience in Japan and all over the world.

Congratulations!

The Fifth JDR Award ceremony was held in Kanda, Japan, at December 18, 2019 and a prize were given to Doctor Yuichiro Usuda, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED), Japan. We congratulate the winner and sincerely wish for future success.

Message from the Winner

We are very honored to receive the JACIII’s Best Paper Award 2019. We would like to thank the award committee for this great honor. We have proposed a user modeling method based on personal values. The method is called Rating Matching Rate (RMRate), which was reported in our previous publication on the JACIII. Using RMRate, personal values are modeled as the effect of an item’s attributes on a user’s rating. Assuming that the personal values strongly affect our evaluation of unpopular items, this paper examines its effectiveness for long tail item recommendation. The proposed long tail item recommendation consists of RMRate, user-based collaborative filtering, and a strategy for selecting long tail items. The experimental results show incorporating personal values enables the recommendation of long tail items while maintaining recommendation accuracy. As introducing personal values into recommender systems is a relatively new idea, we decided to submit our papers related to RMRate to the JACIII, which encourages the submission of reports on pioneering studies. We would like to submit our papers to the JACIII to report on subsequent studies in the future.

Message from the Winner

I am very honored to receive this prestigious award, the “JACIII Young Researcher Award 2019.” I am deeply grateful to the JACIII editorial board/office, reviewers, co-authors, and all supporters of this paper, “Characteristics of Rough Set C-Means Clustering.” This award is highly encouraging to my further study. My research interests include cluster analysis (clustering) and soft computing, especially rough set theory. This paper introduces the perspective of rough set theory to hard C-means (HCM; k-means) clustering to deal with uncertainty. The proposed method, rough set C-means (RSCM), is a clustering model based on the object space granulated by a binary relation. RSCM uses the rough set to approximate each temporal cluster and considers whether it is positive, possible, or uncertain that an object belongs to each cluster. While fuzzy clustering has been well studied and widely used, rough set-based clustering has not been well studied, leaving room for further investigation. Since cluster structures in the real-world dataset are not always clear, the handling of uncertainty based on rough sets is a very important and interesting subject. I hope that this study will contribute to the development of both clustering and rough set theory, and that rough set-based clustering will be promoted and widely used in the future. I also wish for the development of JACIII and the field of computational intelligence and intelligent informatics. Thank you.

Message from the Winner

I would like to thank the award committee of the JACIII of Fuji Technology Press for granting me this award. It is a great honor and an affirmation of my current academic level.

I am now a Ph.D. candidate at the Beijing Institute of Technology, China. When my supervisor, Professor Yaping Dai, notified me by email that my paper had been selected to win the JACIII Best Review Paper Award, I was amazed and excited. As this is my first time to win a best paper award issued by a famous international journal, I would also like to share my happiness with my labmates, friends, and family members.

This paper was written with the help of Professors Yaping Dai and Kaoru Hirota. I would like to thank them for enhancing the quality of the paper, modifying the English in it, and providing meaningful academic advice in general. The main purpose of this paper was to survey recent prominent works on crowd counting and anomaly detection based on the analysis of pedestrians. These two tasks are significant research areas that have been gathering attention in the fields of intelligent surveillance systems and public security. In fact, by the end of 2019, top computer vision conferences such as CVPR and ICCV will have published more than 20 papers on crowd counting alone. I hope that this paper can provide some meaningful basic knowledge to those who are interested and would like to learn more about crowd counting and anomaly detection.

I continue to do research on the task of crowd counting and have already finished some additional works. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to discuss related issues with experts in this field and to collaborate, if possible.

Testimonial

Presenting the Fourth JDR Award

It is our great pleasure to present the Fourth JDR Award to Professor Nobuo Shuto for his outstanding contributions to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) as the Honorary Editor.

Professor Shuto, Professor Emeritus of Tohoku University, is a pioneer of the theoretical study of tsunamis. He has also made a large contribution to the development of numerical simulations, visualization through computer graphics, and other critical techniques for the study and control of tsunami disasters. The development of tsunami disaster reduction and management that we have today is thanks in large part to his achievements.

On behalf of the JDR editorial board, I wish to thank Professor Nobuo Shuto for his efforts and to congratulate him as the winner of the Fourth JDR Award.

Message from the Winners

After the 1960 Great Chilean Tsunami, coastal dikes were remodeled and new ones constructed in Japan. In 1968, immediately after the completion of those construction and remodeling works, the Tokachi-Oki Earthquake struck, but fortunately the structures involved sustained very little damage. This led to a general feeling that it was possible to protect against the tsunamis completely by simply building coastal dikes and other defense structures. Japan did not see an increase in the number of tsunami researchers, but things were worse in the U.S. The National Science Foundation allocated its tsunami-related budget only to the NOAA, which issues tsunami forecasts, and allocated the rest of the budget entirely to ocean development. This situation continued until the 1983 Nihonkai-Chubu Earthquake Tsunami struck. In 1992, there was a tsunami earthquake off the coast of Nicaragua. Following that, research was conducted based on international cooperation through fax communications. Then cooperative international research continued to be done on tsunamis such as the 1992 Flores Tsunami, the 1993 Hokkaido Nansei-Oki Earthquake Tsunami, and the 1996 Irian Jaya Tsunami. However, their findings were provided only through Proceedings of the International Tsunami Symposium every two years, and most of the findings were limited to factual information about tsunamis.

Requests for information on tsunamis rapidly increased after the 2004 Great Indian Ocean Tsunami, information not only on the tsunami itself but also on tsunami countermeasures. It was when JDR made its appearance. The JDR disseminated the latest information for practical use. It also benefitted those who were the sources of information, as they no longer had to deal with the frustration of having to wait for conferences held only every two years. In addition, the JDR reviews submissions
much more quickly than do other journals. Tsunamis, such as the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Tsunami and the 2018 Sulawesi Earthquake Tsunami, continue to strike. As a platform for sharing knowledge related to reconstruction and countermeasures, as well as to tsunamis themselves, the importance the JDR is growing.

This is why you are encouraged to contribute to the JDR.

Congratulations!

We announce that the Fourth JDR Award was won by Professor Emeritus Nobuo Shuto, Tohoku University, Japan. We congratulate the winner and sincerely wish for future success.

Testimonial

Presenting the Third JDR Award

It is our great pleasure to present the Third JDR Award to Professor Shunichi Koshimura for his outstanding contributions to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) as the author of 27 JDR articles and the guest editor of three special JDR issues.

Dr. Koshimura started his academic career as a young and promising researcher in the field of tsunami disasters. He is now a full professor at Tohoku University’s International Research Institute of Disaster Research, where he specializes in remote sensing and geoinformatics for disaster management.

It is our conviction that Professor Koshimura will be productive in both researching and teaching disaster risk reduction for many decades to come, reflecting his rich and profound professional experience with the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster.

Message from the Winners

I am honored to receive the Third JDR Award, and I am very grateful to the editorial committee members and staff of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). I also wish to express my gratitude to all the authors who contributed to the papers in three special issues entitled “Disaster and Big Data,” which were published in 2016, 2017, and 2018. I really enjoyed the opportunities I had in guest editing the 36 excellent papers in the special issues.

My approximately 30 publications in the JDR include the outcomes from the international joint research projects of SATREPS Indonesia, Peru, and Chile, so I would like to share the delight of receiving the JDR award with all the research members of the projects and thank them for their fruitful collaboration.

The Journal of Disaster Research all across the wide and comprehensive scope of its outstanding research has provided topical and valuable insights as well as significant implications for disaster reduction and management. I do hope I have contributed to making the JDR an excellent publication of valuable disaster research findings from around the world.

Congratulations!

The Third JDR Award ceremony was held in Kanda, Japan, at November 14, 2017 and the prize was given to Professor Shunichi Koshimura, International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University, Japan. We congratulate the winner and sincerely
wish for future success.

Testimonial

Presenting the Second JDR Award

The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) has published many special issues in addition to its regular issues. These special issues have included various papers that have covered disasters comprehensively. Among them, the Special Issue on “Tsunami Forces and Effects on Structures” in Vol.4 No.6, 2009 and the Special Issue on “Uncertainties in Tsunami Effects” in Vol.11 No.4, 2016 include practical papers on tsunami disasters which contribute greatly to tsunami disaster control. The members of the JDR editorial board have unanimously agreed to present this second JDR Award to the editor of the special issues:

I met Professor Harry Yeh for the first time while doing a field survey on the earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores Island, Indonesia in December 1992. He was already a world-renowned researcher, known for his theoretical tsunami research based on accurate hydraulic experiments. I remember that I was deeply impressed with his energetic attitude towards the survey as he worked to reveal phenomena on the disaster site. Since then, I have accompanied him on various disaster surveys, and I have listened to his unique and significant opinions on tsunami studies at many conferences. The two special issues mentioned above reflect his broad range of knowledge and experience.

On behalf of the JDR editorial board, I wish to thank Professor Harry Yeh for his efforts and to congratulate him as the winner of the second JDR Award.

Message from the Winners

I am honored to receive the JDR Award and am very grateful to the editors and staff members of the Journal of Disaster Research. I am also deeply indebted to the authors who contributed their excellent papers to the two special issues that I had the privilege of guest editing. One issue focused on tsunami forces and effects on structures (Vol.4 No.6) and the other on uncertainties in tsunami effects (Vol.11 No.4). I organized these special issues in cooperation with professors Shuto1 and Sato2, without whom I could not have achieved such fruitful special issues. So this award must be shared with both professor Shuto and professor Sato.

The Journal of Disaster Research was founded in 2006, immediately after two impactful disasters: the 2004 Great Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The founding of the journal was very timely, and I was inspired when I was invited to serve as an international member of the editorial board. Recognizing that research in natural hazards must be trans-disciplinary and interwoven with expertise in geophysics, engineering, and social sciences, I felt it was difficult to locate a proper arena for reporting research findings. And because natural hazards do not recognize national borders, I felt it was crucial that research be conducted with close international collaboration.

In the Journal’s early days, it published collections of papers originating mostly from Japanese research activities. But contributions from other countries have increased dramatically, and today the Journal is in the process of establishing an exceptional reputation, attracting truly outstanding research articles from around the world. The Journal of Disaster Research now serves as an excellent dissemination outlet for cutting-edge natural hazard and disaster research, and I intend to continually contribute to this exemplary international journal.

Congratulations!

The second JDR Award ceremony was held in Kasumigaseki, Japan, at November 22, 2016 and the certificate was given to the JDR award winner, Prof. Harry Yeh of Oregon State University (Prof. Shinji Sato of the University of Tokyo received it as a dupty). We congratulate the winner and sincerely wish for future success.

Testimonial

Presenting the First JDR Award

Founded in August 2006, the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) reached Vol.10 this year. Regular issues are published bimonthly, six times a year. Special editions on the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are published once a year, with four of the five issues planned having been published.

The JDR’s features lie in its broad spectrum of subjects and the comprehensiveness of their treatment. These points are extremely important in dealing with disasters, but may lose focus in the selection of article content and have difficulty in evaluating it.

From its inception, the JDR has made each issue special, focusing on certain topics and inviting specialists in the area to serve as (guest) editors of each issue. Thanks to the cooperation of such specialists, the JDR has developed being able to reach Vol.10 this year.
To mark this anniversary, the JDR has established the JDR Award, an idea originally proposed by one of our editors, Shinji Egashira.
We feel that having a broad spectrum of subjects is fitting as the selection criterion for the JDR Award, but this has made it difficult to set up objective selection criteria.

A major factor in selection has been the number of downloads. Both of the two-part articles on the special issue on “Enhancement of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Mitigation in Peru” in Vol.8 No.2 and Vol.9 No.6 ranked among the top ten downloads in the almost 60 JDR issues published thus far.

Each issue derives its significance from the relevance of the featured topic, so members of the editorial committee have unanimously agreed to present this first JDR Award to the guest editors of the special issue:

Fumio Yamazaki,
Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Japan

Carlos Zavala,
Professor, CISMID, Faculty of Civil Engineering,
National University of Engineering (UNI), Peru

On behalf of the JDR editorial committee, I wish to thank them for their efforts and to congratulate them as the first winners of the Award.

Message from the Winners

We are most honored to have been selected as winners of the First JDR Award – an unexpected surprise because we did not realize that we had contributed so much to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). The JDR provided us with a fine opportunity to present our results on a project of the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS), making our work known to the world-wide scientific community. SATREPS is sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

From 2010 to 2015, Japanese and Peruvian researchers conducted a SATREPS project, Enhancement of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Technology in Peru. To announce our research output, we chose the JDR and had our work published in 36 articles in two special issues, in 2013 and 2014. The JDR’s prompt peer reviews and publication processes are really helpful to projects such as SATREPS, which have time limits. Our results would otherwise have been published much later.

Congratulations on the JDR’s first-decade anniversary! We believe the JDR is an important journal in the natural hazard and disaster management field as it has been recognized as a Scopus indexed journal. The JDR’s open access and the fact that it enables papers to be downloaded free of charge from the web site is very helpful and convenient to readers and helps authors become known to broader audiences. We hope the JDR will get the Impact Factor of Thomson Reuters, becoming a major source of information in the disaster sciences field.

The first JDR Award and JDR 10th anniversary ceremony

The first JDR Award and JDR 10th anniversary ceremony was held in Kasumigaseki, Japan, at November 11 and the certificate was given to the one of the JDR award winners, Prof. Fumio Yamazaki.
We congratulate the winners and sincerely wish for future success.