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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We, as guest editors, are honored to have been given the opportunity to organize this mini special issue on “Modeling of Human-Policy-Technology Nexus and Simulation for Disaster Response and Business Continuity” for the Journal of Disaster Research. This mini special issue aims to contribute to the overcoming of challenges around better design, operation, and management for disaster response and business continuity, where various factors, including human behavior and decision-making, policy and prioritization, monetary and humanitarian costs, and technological and infrastructural constraints, are intertwined, making it difficult to comprehend the entire picture and find an optimal solution.

On the other hand, we firmly believe people have an essential role in disaster response and business continuity. However, unlike physical phenomena, there are no governing equations or laws for human behavior and decision-making; there are variations and inconsistencies in human modeling depending on whether what was done, what ought to be done, what can be done, etc. is being modeled. Sometimes, human behavior must be considered and the different modes of human models clearly distinguished when better socio-technical systems or other systems involving humans are discussed.

All the papers selected introduce the latest innovative research in modeling and simulation, training system design, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis, which are directly and indirectly applicable to a better design, operation, and the management of disaster response and business continuity. At the same time, these papers also focus on one or several aspects of human behavior modes, such as past and current evidence (descriptive model) and what persons or organizations are supposed to be (normative model). The collection of these papers is expected to give good insight and inspiration to the readers and those who may take on the challenges this special issue aims to provide and to help develop an understanding of the importance of a human-centric approach to disaster research.

Three years have passed since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China. The pandemic rapidly spread worldwide, especially through Europe and the Americas.

The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) edited its “Special Issue on COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics, Part 1 and Part 2” at the end of 2020 and 2021, and their electronic versions were published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117) and January 2022 (JDR Vol.17, No.1, pp. 1-158), respectively.

However, the pandemic is still continued and not yet eradicated. The cumulative number of cases of COVID-19 worldwide, as released in the World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Update was 260 million as of December 2021. We therefore planned for the publication of this Special Issue Part 3 and called for papers.

This Special Issue Part 3 includes nine manuscripts, which deal from various fields related to COVID-19, such as including vaccine rollout program, the role of social media, problems in school education, therapeutic agents, virology, and general epidemiology. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is a complicated disaster.

In December 2022, the global number of cumulative cases have increased to 940 million, almost one-tenth of the world’s population, although this number includes many asymptomatic infections. On the contrary, the number of new COVID-19 cases has slowed of mildness in the American and European countries in the year 2022, yet there has been a conspicuous increase in newly reported cases in Asia, especially in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Although the cases from African countries have still continued to report fewer numbers of cases than the number from other areas, However, there is still some possibility of that this is because of a lower number of medicinal tests, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, are given in African countries. If this is the reason, future increases of the medicinal tests in Africa may cause result in undesirable increases of in the number of cases therein African counties.

We are hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic will be eradicated in the next year, consequently no necessary for the rendering a Special Issue Part 4.

This special issue includes works related to the ongoing project “Regional Resilience Enhancement through Establishment of Area-BCM at Industry Complexes in Thailand.” This special issue can be considered evidence that the research and development of this project follows and supports the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Let’s imagine we are taking a tour of Area-Business Continuity Management (Area-BCM) and SDGs together.

As a starter, the baseline concept of our Area-BCM is discussed (Kodaka et al.) followed by the papers focusing on the specific SDGs.

Toward SDG Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

We can start the tour with this goal, as it is the project’s primary focus. In order to have sustainable cities and communities, the concept of Area-BCM can be considered. Related to it, there is a study that reviews and suggests the critical success factors (Meechang and Watanabe). Moreover, we can see the possibility of extending the concept of business continuity to other service sectors, such as tourism during COVID-19 (Yudha et al.).

Toward SDG Goal 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth

Let’s move to the next goal. There is a study exploring the well-being of working people and its likelihood among the local people in the community (Duangkaew et al.). People can be considered human resources in the Area-BCM. Accordingly, learning how people fared during a disaster allows us to design the suitable Area-BCM strategies for organizations. With sustainable employment aspects, inundation model for industrial park-scale is proposed for decision making regarding business continuity (Kakinuma et al.). And a practical model for shared risk assessment within multi-stakeholder is discussed for decision as a community (Ono).

Toward SDG Goal 13 Climate Action

Regarding the third goal, it is necessary to know the outcome of hazard analysis for us to understand the risks. Thus, an approach to flood hazard mapping using the Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation model is presented (Sriariyawat et al.). Through various techniques, flood inundation models are developed. Furthermore, detailed flood inundation model with different return period is proposed for more flexible and feasible decision making (P. C. et al.).

There is still on a way to go. Nevertheless, we hope that these current findings will guide the future research and development of Area-BCM.

We are very pleased to publish this special issue, dedicated to NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2022. There are four papers, two reviews, and one note in this issue.

In the last year of the NIED’s fourth mid/long term plan period, which began in 2016, natural disasters have occurred every year, including earthquake disasters such as the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake (M7.3) and the 2018 Iburi, Hokkaido earthquake (M7.1). Rainfall disasters include the heavy rainfall in northern Kyushu in July 2017, southwestern Japan in July 2018, northern Kyushu in August 2019, Kanto and Tohoku in October 2019, and Kyushu in July 2020. In the summer of 2022, the heavy rainfall and extreme weather continued over Japan.

The first three papers and one note contain hazard and risk information. Dohi et al. present the development of Japan Tsunami Hazard Information Station (J-THIS), Cui et al. present a study of the estimation of damage based on analysis of SNS Information, Nakamura provides avalanche risk information, and Ise et al. note information linkage by the Shared Information Platform for Disaster Management (SIP4D). Horiuchi et al. review the contribution of the E-Defence shaking table. This special issue also includes two social science works. Nagata et al. present tsunami disaster risk reduction education programs, and Yamazaki-Honda reviews promoting coherence among disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development for disaster resilience.

In the first half of the 21st century, a mega disaster such as the Nankai Trough earthquake is expected to occur. Extreme climatic events are also becoming more frequent: typhoons, floods, heavy rains and snows, landslides, and heat waves. We hope this issue provides information useful to all readers who study natural disasters.

Since Japan has 111 active volcanoes, we living there need to be prepared for the volcanic disasters that we will likely encounter in our lifetime. The Integrated Program for Next Generation Volcano Research and Human Resource Development (INeVRH), a research project of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), started in 2016 and is now in its 7th year. It is approaching its final stage will be ready to make proposals that will improve our knowledge from both scientific and practical points of view. In theme A, the Japan Volcanic Data Network (JVDN) system started its function as a volcanic research platform, providing the observation and analysis data of many universities, governmental agencies, and institutes. The JVDN system promotes collaborative, multidisciplinary study. In theme B, many strategic observation techniques now deployed have revealed the characteristics of volcanoes in detail. For example, a dense seismic and magnetic survey has clarified the fine structure of the hydrothermal system beneath volcanoes, providing information that can be used to evaluate their phreatic eruption potential. In addition, brand-new volcanic gas observation techniques using drones now obtain in-situ information effectively. Theme C has obtained geologic and petrologic findings at many volcanoes and has come to the stage in which systematic compilation of this database would be useful to comparative studies of many volcanoes. These findings are also used in numerical simulations that combine geologic, petrologic, and geophysical formulations to produce more comprehensive models used to interpret volcanic activity. Theme D focuses on the development of practical technologies for volcanic disaster mitigation, mainly related to volcanic ash. A scheme for the quick detection and evaluation of volcanic ash is proposed through observation and numerical simulation, and an experiment is performed to reveal the thickness threshold of volcanic ash deposits on air-conditioners. This special issue reports on some up-to-date topics that could become the basis of dynamic and effective links between themes A, B, C, and D, which may serve as a base and direction for discussions that summarize and conclude this 10-year project.

Migration is dynamic and varies greatly across the globe due to myriad factors, including demography, economy, geography, and environment. As people move, a number of challenges exist that can leave human rights and human dignity as an afterthought to the migration process. This special issue provides a legal and policy framework for supporting “migration with dignity,” providing examples of how to apply this framework across a number of contexts, including climate change, the migration cycle, and pandemics.

COVID-19 has drastically changed mobility and migration in key spheres, such as transportation, travel, construction, and hospitality. Our research for this special issue was conducted between 2020 and 2021; therefore, we had the opportunity to witness a once-in-a-century global pandemic with direct impacts on migration inflows and outflows. Consequently, we have included pandemics as a key theme for consideration in this issue, believing that the research agenda should be informed by the assessment of impacts in both the atoll countries and in the United States – the most common “destination” of Pacific Islanders. This additional research revealed the vulnerabilities of migrants in the destination countries and in their home countries, vulnerabilities that would not otherwise have been apparent.

Our research was also directly impacted by the pandemic. We intended to conduct field research in countries such as the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), and the Republic of Maldives, with the RMI and FSM serving as countries of “origin” for migration to the United States. In the Maldives, there is a large domestic migration from the atolls to the newly constructed man-made islands. We experienced research and travel limitations due to COVID-19, where many countries have adopted strict isolation policies to prevent the spread of disease. Therefore, we had to conduct our surveys remotely using the Internet or by asking collaborators living in the area to conduct surveys on our behalf.

Our special issue also touches on the issue of the intergenerationality of immigrants in terms of how migrants adapt or assimilate into the receiving society, and how the mass media plays a role in the perceptions of migrants and the perceived problems associated with immigration by host countries. Many opportunities remain for further exploration and research, including how migration has changed in the post-pandemic world. We intend to pursue these opportunities in 2022 and beyond.

Japan is a country that experiences a considerable number of natural disasters. It sees frequent seismic and volcanic activity because it is located on the boundaries of multiple plates. In addition, the temperate monsoon climate brings heavy rains and therefore floods and landslides. Since ancient times, the Japanese have repeatedly recovered from various natural disasters. That history has much to teach those living alive now.

In Japan, observation systems for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have been set up, and research based on the records of these instruments is actively being done. However, some earthquakes and eruptions repeat at intervals of hundreds of years, making the investigation of historical and archaeological materials essential if the true circumstances of such natural events and damage they caused are to be learned. A part of the historical disaster research currently being conducted in Japan is presented in this mini special issue.

This mini special issue contains four papers. Ebara’s paper, taking up the ways in which artificial development has transformed the topography in the last 500 years, considers the relationship between the original topography and the damage caused by typhoons. Kaneko’s contribution considers the damage sustained by one village that was hit by the tsunami that resulted from the great earthquake in the early 18th century. Kaneko surveys archaeological sites and tombstones that reveal that many of the victims were women and children. Sugimori et al. elucidate the exact time of the great earthquake in the 19th century by using historical materials written in Japanese, English, and Russian. Along with the importance of comparing and contrasting various literatures, the work teaches us that disasters have no borders. Murata proposes a method of utilizing archaeological excavations in earthquake research. It also presents a case in which the condition of the ground, which cannot be understood by surface observation alone, is estimated from traces of a disaster.

From these papers, readers can learn the potential of historical and archaeological materials in disaster research.

This special issue focuses on “Build Back Better,” which is the key concept of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction provides United Nations member states and economies concrete actions to protect their economic development achievements from disaster risk. However, how “Build Back Better” can be measured and linked to disaster risk reduction remain unclear.

Three papers here analyze the results of the “Life Recovery Survey Five Years After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake,” which was conducted in June of 2016. The first Life Recovery Survey was conducted four years after the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake to document the extent to which the disaster victims had been able to rebuild their lives. Subsequently, the survey was conducted every two years until ten years after the earthquake. The survey was also conducted in the areas affected by the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake and the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake. Five years after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the present authors conducted a survey to document the actual situation of the disaster victims in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures, which were the hardest hit by the disaster.

In addition, we analyzed the history of Nankai Trough earthquakes with the goal of preparing for the next Nankai Trough earthquake, which is predicted to occur in the near future. These results make it possible to identify issues and make recommendations on the kinds of systems that should be implemented.

It is our hope that this special issue will provide basic data to elucidate these issues.

The main goal of the conceptual framework of this mini special issue, which is based on the International Symposium on Human Survivability 2016 (ISHS2016), is to provide a fresh look at the global challenges facing humanity in the areas of energy, water, food, population, disease, etc. The ISHS2016 focused on enhancing resilience to extreme or large-scale disasters that may threaten the well-being of present and future generations. By considering past, present, and future dimensions, we aimed to develop a holistic approach that integrated various research fields.

The symposium brought together scholars from not only the natural and social sciences but also the humanities. The idea behind this was that we need to go beyond the “silo-based” approach, where handling disasters is something left to experts with specialized knowledge. The integration of the knowledge of scholars from different academic fields and backgrounds could provide novel solutions to the problem of how to enhance our resilience to future disasters.

This mini special issue aims to identify key issues in prioritizing several different types of disasters in terms of their time frames and impact frames, with the knowledge that the disasters are of completely different types and that the capacity of each institution and the consciousness of society in terms of each issue are all unequal. From those, we may identify the main characteristics of “low probability and high impact disasters,” as well as the different approaches that are needed. Disasters vary from infectious diseases to space weather, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, 2 years ago, became a pandemic, that continues to this day.

The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) edited a special issue, “Special Issue on COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics” at the end of 2020 and an electronic version of the issue was published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117).

Even though one year has passed, life has not yet returned to normal due to the continued spread of COVID-19. Although the percentage of the general public that has been vaccinated continues to increase and various drugs and treatments have been developed, the number of COVID-19 cases also continues to increase. A huge number of COVID-19 cases have been reported, especially in Europe and the Americas.

Accordingly, we planned to publish Special Issue Part 2 and called for papers.

This Special Issue Part 2 includes 18 manuscripts, which deal with general epidemiology, effects on socioeconomic or educational areas, and clinical medicine, including vaccines and medical treatments.

The virus spike protein plays an important role in its intrusion into human cells and the onset of COVID-19 infection. Although SARS-CoV-2 (the pathogenic virus of COVID-19) originated in Wuhan, China, various variant strains with mutation in gene coding in the spike protein have appeared in multiple countries. The WHO classifies these variants into the categories of VOC (variant of concern), VOI (variant of interest), or VUM (variant under monitoring).

The definitions of VOC and VOI are as follows. VOC: “A SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more changes in the degree of global public health significance.” VOI: “Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology, increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation, or decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.”

The WHO uses Greek letters designating the variants. Accordingly as they have appeared, variants have been designated as alpha (α: the UK variant), beta (β: the South Africa variant), and delta (δ: the Indian variant).

After the deadline for the manuscript of this special issue, a new variant, omicron (o) originated in South Africa and Botswana, and it immediately began spreading worldwide. Unfortunately, it was impossible to include the manuscript on the omicron variant in this Special Issue Part 2, as the deadline had already passed.

As COVID-19 continues to spread, the JDR will plan to edit Part 3 of this COVID-19 special issue.

Numerical simulation and modeling became an essential technology in tsunami research and disaster management. Various numerical models were proposed and utilized for the development of tsunami risk assessment, inundation maps, and evacuation plans. The model verification and validation standards would be crucial to ensure sufficient reliability of tsunami risk assessment, inundation maps, as well as a consistency among various efforts. Common approach to ensure sufficient accuracy and reliability of numerical modeling is developing benchmark problems of hydraulic experiments and to use them for numerical model’s verification and validation.

To satisfy this requirement, “Tsunami Modeling Hackathon” was held in September 2020 to organize new benchmark problems in numerical modeling of tsunamis and to improve their reliability and accuracy. Hackathon is an intensive-gathering event of computer programmers and others involved in software development to create outcomes by the end of the event. This event was organized by Prof. Tomoyuki Takahashi of Kansai University and his colleagues, who led the tsunami research subcommittee in Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE).

Tsunami modeling hackathon, in which about 23 teams and 162 researchers joined, included experiment and modeling teams in seven benchmark problems: urban tsunami inundation, landslide tsunami, tsunami loading on seawalls and coastal structures, sediment transport, drift of floating objects. The modeling groups performed the blind tests to cross-validate and interpret the results of their simulations in seven benchmark problems given by the experiment groups and discussed the improvement.

This special issue reports the outcomes of the tsunami modeling hackathon, and includes six papers (five in this issue, one in the regular issue). We hope this issue will provide useful insights for tsunami modelers and contribute to establishing a standardized way to ensure that various tsunami numerical models would be validated through the benchmark problems.

We are very pleased to publish this Mini Special Issue, dedicated to NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2021. Three papers and one survey report are included.

Miura et al. indicate the scope of disaster prevention covered by the new courses of study in the field of disaster prevention. By visualizing the contents of classification and analysis, they propose how to handle the scope of disaster prevention in disaster prevention learning in consideration of the comprehensiveness to solve the problems. In the second paper, a case study on flood damage in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, Mizui and Fujiwara analyze a method of immediately determining the amount of waste disposal work and the number of residents and disaster volunteers required in the event of a disaster. Fujiwara et al. study the feasibility of estimating damage to large-spanned building structures by conducting shake table tests on a small gymnasium model with simulated damage and measuring the natural frequencies and mode shapes. Onoue et al., in a work published as a survey report, present a method for analyzing slope displacement by using the distance image data of a depth camera. They indicate the possibility of detecting minute changes that can precede slope failure.

We hope this issue provides information useful to all readers who study natural disasters.

A holistic and comprehensive perspective on society is essential to disaster research. However, at one time, the world did not have any scholarly journals that dealt with disasters from a holistic point of view. This situation gave rise to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), the first issue of which was published in August 2006. In principle, six issues are published annually, with special or extra issues also published in some years.

The Great East Japan Earthquake struck in March 2011, five years after the first issue of the JDR. Following this incident, we decided to publish a special issue whenever there was a major disaster. All accepted papers and articles were to be published free of charge, in electronic format. So far, eight special issues have been published.

Since this year 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of that disaster, we at the JDR have decided to publish a special issue of notes on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster. The selected theme is “Thoughts About the Great Disaster Now That Ten Years Have Passed.” As an academic journal dealing comprehensively with disasters and disaster risk reduction, we asked people working in all disaster-related fields to submit, from their unique perspectives, their views or proposals in any area or subject regarding what changes have taken place, what has remained the same, or what is needed in the future.

We have the twelve notes presented here in this Special Issue on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Part VI. We hope that these notes provide seeds for further progress in the field of disaster research.

Lastly, the editors would like to thank all contributors who submitted their manuscripts and the reviewers who provided valuable feedback with their constructive comments.

This special issue summarizes some of the findings of the first half of our international joint research between Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam. This collaborative research is based on the framework of the e-ASIA Joint Research Program (e-ASIA JRP) and lasts for three years. Rainfall-induced landslides are a common disaster in many Asian countries. Our goal is to develop a practical method for landslide susceptibility mapping so that there are fewer landslide disasters in the future.

The e-ASIA JRP is an international joint initiative of public funding organizations in the East Asia Summit member countries. Based on the co-funding mechanism, support for the research teams is received from the funding organizations in their respective countries. Since 2019, the Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese teams have been supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), the National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand (NSTDA), and the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam (MOST), respectively.

In the first half of our project, we completed the basic steps for developing the system. In this special issue, we are proud to present some of our achievements, including studies on slope failure analysis, landslide prevention works, meteorological observations, landslide monitoring, statistical or wide-area risk evaluations, mathematical models, and flash flood control. In addition to the above, we also present other valuable research achievements that related members have provided to help ensure the achievement of our goals. In total, 20 papers are published here. We believe that our comprehensive research activities will dramatically increase future landslide disaster mitigation, especially in monsoon Asia, and will strongly augment the roadmap for achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a common desire of humanity.

Natural hazards continue to be an increasing challenge to societies around the world, with many societies being impacted by multiple types of hazard events. To reduce the impact of these hazards, we must not only quantify the hazard and risk associated with multi-hazard events but also understand the uncertainty associated with these events. Resilience can only be improved by considering all these factors. Multi-hazard and risk-modeling approaches are receiving increasing attention globally; however, the challenges of assessing uncertainty in both single- and multi-hazard risks are considerable. Without a clear understanding of the risks and their uncertainties, measures to mitigate these risks and to increase resilience face difficult decisions. In the present Special Issue, we have five papers and one report on the Tokyo Metropolitan Resilience Project: Interdisciplinary and Industry-Academia Collaboration Research for Enhancing Social Resilience to Natural Disasters in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area –DEKATSU Activity–, Multi-Data Integration System to Capture Detailed Strong Ground Motion in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, Development of the Training Tool “KUG” for Temporary Lodging Facilities and Companies for Stranded Commuters, Development of Matching Modeling for Human Resource Allocation of Shelter Management by the Set Theory, Time-Cost Estimation for Early Disaster Damage Assessment Methods, Depending on Affected Area, and A Report of the Questionnaire Survey on Awareness of COVID-19 and Shelters.

As rainfalls exceeding the designed level have increased, so has damage associated with pluvial flooding. Typhoon Hagibis, which swept Japan in 2019, left 140 municipalities in 15 prefectures scarred from flooding. The sewage networks damaged by the typhoon affected civic life by paralyzing urban functions, raising concerns in urban flood risk and management. Increases in heavy rainfall events associated with global climate change are expected to increase damage from pluvial flooding, thereby necessitating reviews of current urban flood risk management for the purpose of making further improvements against future threats. As we enter an era of frequent urban flooding, it is vitally important that we prepare for urban flood risk management by sharing scientific and technological knowledge among academics, private companies, and administrators.

In this context, the current issue is a compilation of contemporary research studies in academia, technological advances in private companies, and practical applications in public administrations in Japan. The works include: the application of urban flood modeling in safe evacuation strategies, the assessment of economic loss, and the impact of climate change; state of the art technologies for urban flood management with the Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet Communication Technology (ICT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and the next generation of weather radars; and best practices for flood countermeasures, based on knowledge and experience from historical flooding and applied in prefectural governments and local municipalities.

We are grateful to all the authors and reviewers who contributed to this special issue, and we hope that it may internationally enhance knowledge-exchange in preparation for growing urban flood risks.

This special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research focuses on disaster storytelling, an emerging concept in disaster risk reduction. Despite its popularity and importance, its individual practices and activities, as they tend to be spontaneous and local, have received only limited attention from academia and have not been given special attention by the disaster research community.

The papers included in this volume contain multi-dimensional discussions on disaster storytelling, including ones that focus on concepts and theory, the functions of disaster museums, tourism, local communities, UNESCO geoparks, disaster ruins and heritage, art and culture, and disaster education. The readers can understand the variety of disaster storytelling activities that exist around the world and their potential contribution to building resilience in society. We believe this issue is the first academic publication to focus specifically on disaster storytelling, and we hope that this volume contributes to creating scientific value, attracts additional attention, and develops further discussions about the role of disaster storytelling within the disaster research community. We also believe that such discussions will help various individuals and entities reidentify the importance and significance of their activities of disaster storytelling as well as contribute to continuing or strengthening such activities around the world.

All of the contributors to this issue participated in the International Forum on Telling Live Lessons from Disasters (TeLL-Net Forum), held January 24–26, 2020 in Kobe, Japan. The articles included in this issue include ones that were inspired by discussions during and after the forum. Readers interested in this forum can obtain the official report from the TeLL-Net website: https://tell-net.jp/forum2020/pdf/00_Tell_Net2020_Report_print.pdf.

We, the editorial board of this special issue, would like to express our deep appreciation to the Hyogo Earthquake Memorial 21st Century Research Institute for the research grant on disaster storytelling. We also would like to express our gratitude to the Kobe Machizukuri Rokko Island Fund Charitable Trust (Tokyo, Japan) and AIG Institute (Osaka, Japan) for financial contributions that supported the publication of the issue.

COVID-2019 was first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and from there it spread worldwide. Due to this worldwide distribution of COVID-19 cases, the WHO declared a COVID-19 pandemic. The pathogen of COVID-19, a novel corona virus, resembles SARS-CoV, the pathogen of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome, a pandemic in 2003), so the International Committee on Taxonomy Virology named it SARS-CoV-2. However, COVID-19 is a different disease from SARS, and should be controlled to the extent possible with the effective vaccines and therapeutic medicines.

Although one year has passed since the first appearance of the disease, the number of COVID-19 cases continues to increase, and the pandemic is now in its third large wave. It is thought that it will be difficult to eradicate the disease completely, because SARS-CoV-2 is possible to invade and live in various host animals in addition to humans.

During this pandemic, the JDR has put together the special issue “COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics.” Because there have been many pandemics that have transformed society in various ways, the special issue includes historical pandemics in addition to COVID-19. The manuscripts in this issue include various subjects related to COVID-19, including methods of analyzing the pandemic, suggestions for countermeasures against it, methods of prevention and epidemiological reviews, among others.

The WHO has released a large volume of pandemic information on an ongoing basis, including its “COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update.” In the weekly edition of December 27, it reported the cumulative number of cases and percentages of the global total from around the world: the Americas 34,403,371 (43%), Europe 25,271 (31%), Africa 1,831,227 (2%), and the Western Pacific 1.059,751 (1%). It is notable that 74% of cumulative global total number of cases have been reported in the Americas and Europe, where most developed countries are included, whereas the numbers in Africa, which includes many developing countries, and the Western Pacific region, which includes Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia in addition to Japan and China, are 2% and 1%, respectively. This indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic is a different from previous epidemics caused by other infectious diseases.

As the pandemic spreads, the JDR plans to edit Part 2 of this COVID-19 special issue.