The nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCo)’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011, triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami, is probably the worst “catastrophic technological risk” ever experienced by Japan. Whether this serious accident could have been prevented or managed better is the key question that we need to pursue. Technology Assessment (TA), which is intended to help decision making by assessing possible societal impacts of particular technology, can play significant role in managing catastrophic technological risks by providing an objective assessment of technological risks before it happens, while it is happening and even after the accident. In this special issue on TA, we are fortunate to have papers and reviews from both distinguished experts as well as young scholars. The variety of the subject is also very useful to see how TA can be applied under the different situations. In particular, in the post 3.11 society, we believe it is a good occasion to consider institutionalization of TA in Japan.

Recent developments in medicine and anti-microbial treatment based on intensive research on basic microbiology have successfully been controlling many infectious diseases to be nonfatal. As stated by Dr. Nobuhiko Okabe in the first section of this issue, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases still threaten human lives and health both in developing and industrialized countries. A multiprefectural outbreak of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) O111 and O157 due to raw beef consumption took the lives of victims, including young children, earlier this year in Japan, following which people worldwide were panicked by news from Europe of a huge outbreak of EHEC O104. Infectious diseases result from interaction between pathogens and humans including our behaviors.

The Journal of Disaster Research has already drawn readers’ attention to infectious diseases in its special issue on “Our Social Activities Are Always Related to Outbreaks of Infectious Diseases,” with Guest Editor Dr. Masayuki Saijo in JDR Vol.4, No.5, October, 2009. That issue reviewed the background behind infectious disease emergence and reemergence using examples of viral diseases that could cause serious public health concerns, and emphasized the need for preparedness and responses, including against bioterrorism.

The present issue again reminds readers of the threat of infectious diseases by demonstrating bacterial and viral infections, focusing more on basic knowledge about these pathogens. Disease history, and epidemiology and the microbiological nature of pathogens and infection pathways are summarized. Treatment, vaccination and other control measures, and law and other social systems for controlling disease are also reviewed.

We believe that a better understanding of pathogens will enable society to build better strategies for overcoming problems with emerging and reemerging infectious diseases, such as appropriate preventive measures, treatment and control for preventing outbreaks from expanding. We also hope that such considerations are also useful to disaster control experts in other areas.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the authors and reviewers for their great contributions to this issue, and to the Editorial Board and the Secretariat of the Journal of Disaster Research for their continuous encouragement and assistance.

In April 2010, the new Kansai University Safety Science Faculty started with 16 professors, to be increased to 25 from April 2011. Just half are social science researchers and the others natural science researchers. With natural disasters and accidents in Japan growing increasingly complex, conventional analysis on how to reduce disaster damage and avoid accidents has become increasingly inadequate. We need an interdisciplinary approach to solve problems underlying cooperative research.

A representative disaster is the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake, which killed 6,434 people and injured 40,000. It generated economic losses of $102.5 billion, 2.5% of Japan’s GDP at the time.

A representative accident is the 2007 Amagasaki JR Fukuchiyama Line rail crash, which killed 107, including the driver, and injured 562. The direct cause of the accident was speeding – the speed limit on the curve where the train left the tracks was 70 km/h, but the train was moving at 116 km/h. The most important indirect reason was the delayed implementation of a new ATS that should have been put in place from the viewpoint of cost management. Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) functions will be improved as a result of this accident. In the US, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) operates independent of US government agencies – a trend expected to be followed by the JTSB.

Both provided many potentially valuable disaster lessons, some of which this journal introduces. Other risk-related topics in this volume include tsunami information systems, information law, disaster education, and mental health and psychological approaches to the behavior of young people in the face of disaster, analyzed by our faculty members based on original viewpoints. Effort on these researches has to be continued to improve “Safety Science Study” and promote following social action to improve our social structure toward a safe and secure society.

We thank the authors for their earnest contributions and the reviewers for their invaluable advice on improving the quality of this special issue of JDR.

Natural disasters have damaged or destroyed many invaluable cultural heritages. How to mitigate these losses, however, is difficult question. If we cannot save human lives, of course we cannot save cultural heritages from disasters. This requires more sophisticated countermeasures than conventional disaster reduction methodologies. This special issue of JDR provides many examples of such mitigation in historical cities which have expanded with cultural heritages as nuclei.

Cultural heritage disaster mitigation lies somewhere between the fields of cultural preservation and the disaster mitigation engineering. The first two review papers focus on the importance of protecting cultural heritage from natural disasters and the history of this issue from the viewpoints of both engineering and humanities.

Twelve papers discuss engineering problems and the planning of cultural heritages preservation, cover issues such as the seismic performance of traditional wooden structures, the vulnerability of historical masonry structures, disaster reduction in slope failures around cultural heritages, disaster risk analysis at historical cities, fire prevention in historical cities, and urban planning taking cultural heritage into consideration.

This issue closes with a tutorial paper showing the techniques and basics of cultural heritage disaster mitigation. It serves as a practical handbook on mitigating disasters surrounding cultural heritages and historical cities. We expect contributors to this field to increase in the near future due to the importance and urgency of cultural heritage disaster mitigation.

We thank the authors for their earnest contributions and the reviewers for their invaluable advice on improving the quality of this special issue of JDR.

This special issue on ICT Based Disaster Resilient Society features ten articles resulting from a collaborative research project on natural disaster management conducted by the Kyoto University Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) researchers and information and communication technology (ICT) experts from Nippon Telegram and Telegraph Co. Ltd (NTT). For the last two years, they have been studying on how to make society more disaster resilient through proper ICT use focusing on cloud computing, the 20th century’s greatest invention.

In part of a formal research partnership agreement signed in 2005, Kyoto University and NTT have been promoting new research in disaster management. The first two years showed with little concrete achievement beyond implementing one small research project – not exactly what the agreement envisioned.

In 2008, volunteers from Kyoto University and NTT meeting to determine the reason found a tactical mistake – starting by picking projects collaboratively assuming that DPRI and NTT’s disaster management research section shared the same vision and understanding of disaster management. Fundamental differences in research focus also raised problems in finding suitable collaborative research activities.

Briefly, at least three tiers existed for promoting ICT based disaster resilient society: 1) the ICT system infrastructure, 2) the operating system, and 3) individual applications in making society more disaster resilient. NTT was focusing on the first two tiers and DPRI on the last top tier. With this common understanding clarified, collaborative research was set in 2008 on ICT Based Disaster Resilient Society to formulate common ground between the two groups of researchers sharing a common operational picture. One result was a 2009 book from Nikkei BP Publications disseminating to the general public what disaster resilient society looks like, what can be done, and how to do it.

This special issue goes one step further by delivering these research efforts to a worldwide audience.

The first three articles, from the NTT group, describe the ICT basis for making society more disaster resilient, focusing on recent cloud computing advances as the projected venue for disaster management information systems. In article 1, Iwatsuki et al. introduce the autonomous, scattered, but coordinated network concept in a brief history of “Realization of Resilient Society with Information Technology Revolution.” Article 2 has Maeda et al. explained how the ICT system infrastructure, the next-generation network (NGN), provides better disaster management services in “Next Generation ICT Services Underlying the Resilient Society.” In article 3, Higashida et al. detail how organizational structures and information processing systems operate and are improved continuously through the NGN-based ICT infrastructure in “Risk Management and Intelligence Management During Emergency.”

Six articles, from the DPRI group, deal with how ICT based information systems help calculate different damage due to different natural hazards, help strategically in compiling disaster management planning, and help implement effective emergency response and recovery. Kamai proposes how local communities can use land-slide databases offered through cloud computing in “Neural Network-Based Risk Assessment of Artificial Fill Slope in Residential Urban Region.” Fukuoka introduces an attempt to set up worldwide landslide databases in “Application of ICT to Contribution to Resilient Society Against Landslides.” Kobayashi et al. analyze the relationship between flooding and economic loss using detailed numerical simulation in “Development of a Framework for the Flood Economic Risk Assessment Using Vector GIS Data.” Chen et al. estimate possible impact of the Tokai-Tonakai-Nankai earthquake predicted in the 2030s taking into account Japan’s dwindling population from a disaster planning perspective in “Adapting the Demographic Transition in Preparation for the Tokai-Tonankai-Nankai Earthquake.”

One objective of ICT based information infrastructures is to help society recover quickly from disaster impact through minimal damage and loss. Hatayama et al. introduce two risk-adaptive regional management information system (RARMIS) concept applications in “Implementation Technology for a Disaster Response Support System for Local Government.” Urakawa et al. introduce elaborated ICT based life recovery for disaster victims implemented in Kashiwazaki City, devastated by the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki earthquake, in “Building Comprehensive Disaster Victim Support System.”

The last article, “Risk Management for Hospitals Using the Incident Report,” reports wider collaborative research covering risk areas outside of natural hazards and the formulation of a research group going beyond DPRI. Takeda et al. introduce an ICT based system to help risk managers at Kyoto University Hospital by automatically analyzing medical incident reports.

We editors would like to sincerely thank the Kyoto University and NTT collaborative researchers on ICT Based Disaster Resilient Society for their contribution and support. We would like to note with sincere appreciation that this publication is made possible in part by the support from “Special Project for Metropolitan Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area (2007-2011)” by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT). We also thank Wakai of Fuji Technology Press Ltd. for his dedicated compilation of this special issue.

1. Introduction
This Special Issue (Part 2) expands upon the theme “Building Local Capacity for Long-term Disaster Resilience” presented in Special Issue Part 1 (JDR Volume 5, Number 2, April 2010) by examining the evolving concept of disaster resilience and providing additional reflections upon various aspects of its meaning. Part 1 provided a mixed set of examples of resiliency efforts, ranging from administrative challenges of integrating resilience into recovery to the analysis of hazard mitigation plans directed toward guiding local capability for developing resiliency. Resilience was broadly defined in the opening editorial of Special Issue Part 1 as “the capacity of a community to: 1) survive a major disaster, 2) retain essential structure and functions, and 3) adapt to post-disaster opportunities for transforming community structure and functions to meet new challenges.”

In this editorial essay we first explore in Section 2 the history of resilience and then locate it within current academic and policy debates. Section 3 presents summaries of the papers in this issue.
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Since it was first used, nuclear energy’s control has been an important issue. With the generation of electricity as a major nuclear energy application, the improvement of nuclear power generation technology has been required by society, including power plant design, construction, and maintenance and radioactive waste disposal.

Nuclear facilities must also take into account disaster prevention, as in the case of earthquakes and terrorist attacks, particularly because of the extensive potential and actual range of effects. This has made nuclear energy issues important considerations in JDR editorial meetings.

In the July 16, 2007, case of the Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, quake ground motion equaled or exceeded that presumed in the design of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, the world’s largest nuclear power station.

Specific safety objectives for nuclear power plants include stopping the nuclear reaction, cooling the nuclear reactor, preventing radioactive material emission, and shielding surroundings from radiation – all of which were almost completely achieved in this case. Many problems were also revealed, however. JDR examined a special issue on Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station earthquake resistance at an editorial meeting but determined that such a topic remains premature.

In its stead, we have planned a number featuring the structural engineering of nuclear related facilities as a first step in a series of special issues on nuclear energy. The papers for this number were submitted mainly by the presenters of 20th International Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology, held in Espoo, Finland, in 2009 with the catch phrase “Challenges Facing Nuclear Renaissance.”

We greatly appreciate the many contributions to this issue, and would like to thank the reviewers, without whose cooperation this number could not have been published.

Please note that, independent of special numbers such as this one, JDR looks forward to receiving papers on a wide range of fields related to disaster.

Sediment induced disasters have been studied in a wide variety of research fields ranging from social to natural science, with many interesting results. This special issue provides engineers and scientists with an opportunity to share knowledge and experience in engineering research concerning mass sediment movement and related disasters. To clarify this issue’s objectives and encourage submissions, topics have been discussed based on the needs, activities, and possible contributors classified into four categories:

1) Results based on field and literature surveys and data analysis for catastrophic, recent and historical mass movement, and corresponding disaster events.

2) Results based on field surveys and data analysis for recent usual mass movement events and corresponding disasters resulting from rainfall, earthquakes, volcanic activity, and glacier lakes and natural landslide dam events.

3) Mechanics and numerical modeling for mass movement.

4) Measures against sediment-induced and similar disasters.

Last August, we began inviting submissions on these themes just as Typhoon Morakot slowly crossed Taiwan, causing historically significant rainfall events in southern Taiwan involving numerous landslides and debris flows and precipitated casualties, landscape changes, channel bed variations, etc., similar to the catastrophic sediment events occurring in Venezuela in 1999. Two papers describe what happened in Taiwan and Venezuela, providing advice on possible measures against such abnormal catastrophes. Three contributions describe historical catastrophes involving mountain collapse based on analysis of the literature, topography and field surveys, and numerical models. A total of 11 papers have been submitted, 4 of which concern applicability of constitutive equations for debris flow, numerical models for landslide occurrence due to rain fall and flood processes due to rapid landslide dam erosion, and sediment issues resulting from glacier lake outburst flooding. Two submissions focus on corrective measures.

All papers have been reviewed, revised, and accepted for publications, and we believe this special issue will stimulate future studies and prove useful in practical and scientific fields. We heartily thank all of the authors undergoing the review process, and express our sincere appreciation to the distinguished reviewers, without whose invaluable aid this issue would not have been possible.

This special issue of JDR is centered on the theme of “Building Local Capacity for Long-term Disaster Resilience.” Eight papers and one commentary describe challenges in various countries of promoting disaster resilience at local, sub-national, and national levels. Resilience is broadly defined here as the capacity of a community to: 1) survive amajor disaster; 2) retain essential structure and functions; and 3) adapt to post-disaster opportunities for transforming community structure and functions to meet new challenges. This working definition is similar to others put forward in the growing literature on resilience.

Resilience can also be seen as an element of sustainability. Initially referring only to environmental conditions, the concept of sustainable development was defined as that which meets the needs of present generations while not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Bruntland Commission, Our Common Future, 1987). Now, the term sustainability has come to mean the need to preserve all resources for future use, including social, physical, economic, cultural and historical, as well as environmental resources. Disasters destroy resources, making communities less sustainable or even unsustainable.

Resilience helps to protect resources, among other things, through coordination of all four disaster management functions: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Mitigation commonly involves reduction of risks and prevention of disaster losses through long-term sustained actions modifying the environment. Preparedness involves specific preparations for what to do and how to respond during a disaster at the personal, household, and community level. Response means actions taken immediately after a disaster to rescue survivors, conduct evacuation, feed and shelter victims, and restore communications. Recovery involves restoring lives, infrastructure, services, and economic activity, while seeking long-term community improvement.

When possible, emphasis should be placed on building local resilience before a disaster when opportunities are greater for fostering sustainable physical, social, economic, and environmental structures and functions. Waiting until after a disaster to pursue sustainability invites preventable losses and reduces post-disaster resilience and opportunities for improvement. Community resilience involves both “soft” strategies which optimize disaster preparedness and response, and “hard” strategies which mitigate natural and human-caused hazards, thereby reducing disaster losses. Both “soft” and “hard” strategies are undertaken during disaster recovery. In many countries “soft” and “hard” resilience approaches coexist as uncoordinated activities. However, experience suggests that disaster outcomes are better when “soft” and “hard” strategies are purposely coordinated.

Thus, “smart” resilience involves coordination of both “soft” and “hard” resilience strategies, i.e., “smart ” resilience = “soft ” resilience + “hard ” resilience. This concept is reflected in papers in Part 1 of this special issue, based on case studies from India, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, and the US. Additional resilience studies from Japan, the US, and Venezuela will be featured in Part 2 of this special issue.

The first group of papers in Part 1 review resilience issues in regional and community recovery. Chandrasekahr (1) uses a case study to illustrate varying effects of formal stakeholder participatory framework on capacity building following the 2004 Southeast Asia Tsunami from post-disaster recovery in southern India. Chen and Wang (2) examine multiple resiliency factors reflected in community recovery case studies from the Taiwan 1999 Chi Chi Earthquake and debris flow evacuation after Typhoon Markot of 2009. Kamel (3) compares factors affecting housing recovery following the US Northridge Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.

The second group of papers examines challenges of addressing resiliency at national and sub-national scales. Velazquez (4) examines national factors affecting disaster resilience in Mexico. Topping (5) provides an overview of the U.S. Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000, a nationwide experiment in local resilience capacity building through federal financial incentives encouraging local hazard mitigation planning. Boswell, Siembieda, and Topping (6) describe a new method to evaluate effectiveness of federally funded hazard mitigation projects in the US through California’s State Mitigation Assessment Review Team (SMART) loss reduction tracking system.

The final group of papers explores methods of analysis, information dissemination, and pre-event planning. Siembieda (7) presents a model which can be deployed at any geographic level involving timely access to assets in order to reduce pre- and post-disaster vulnerability, as illustrated by community disaster recovery experiences in Central America. Hayashi (8) outlines a new information dissemination system useable at all levels called “micromedia” which provides individuals with real time disaster information regardless of their location. Finally, Poland (9) concludes with an invited special commentary addressing the challenges of creating more complete earthquake disaster resilience through pre-event evaluation of post-event needs at the community level, using San Francisco as the laboratory.

The Editorial Committee extends its sincere appreciation to both the contributors and the JDR staff for their patience and determination in making this special issue possible. Thanks also to the reviewers for their insightful analytic comments and suggestions.

Finally, the Committee wishes to thank Bayete Henderson for his keen and thorough editorial assistance and copy editing support.

This special issue introduces 12 papers on a variety of best practices for effective emergency management using geospatial database and geographic information system (GIS).

The first seven papers are grouped under GIS in action, show how GIS is used for different disaster reduction services. In response to the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, GIS maps have been a part of Niigata PrefectureGovernment Emergency Operation Center work to aid in decisionmaking by providing Common Operational Picture (COP) as detailed by Tamura et al. A victim database was used as the key for integrated victim support in Kashiwazaki City in long-term recovery as detailed by Inoguchi et al. The success of GIS-based postdisaster operations vastly impacts on local governments in Wajima City, hit by the 2007 Noto Hanto Earthquake, where the use of GIS continued and expanded as an effective tool for building local government agency response capacity as detailed by Ura et al. In Kashiwazaki, the failure to apply municipal integrated GIS in postdisaster operations changed GIS policy to a less expensive service-oriented GIS readily available for local government agency use as detailed by Honma et al. A nationwide GIS map archive for researchers contains maps created at different disaster response stages as detailed by Nawa et al. Visualization of disaster impact using GIS is a powerful tool for disaster mitigation and preparedness, with impact by a worst-case-scenario magnitude 7.3 Tokyo Metropolitan earthquake as detailed by Suzuki et al. Design principles for visualization are reviewed by Urabe et al.

In Japan, damage certification is used as the basis for deciding public and private support eligibility for quake victims, making it imperative for local governments to issue certification based on housing damage assessment results as soon and as fairly as possible. Based on practices in Kashiwazaki City following the 2007 Niigataken Chuetsu-oki earthquake, damage to 64,000 household footprints was assessed within one month as detailed in the last five papers.

Two papers cover GIS-based data acquisition in housing damage assessment – PDA-assisted real-time input as detailed by Tonosaki et al., and OCRassisted paper result conversion as detailed by Higashida et al. In addition to housing damage assessment data, preexisting residential and housing databases should be integrated. Basic principles for creating this new database using GeoWrap are detailed by Yoshitomi et al. and implemented for Kashiwazaki as detailed by Matsuoka et al. In anticipating future disasters, a proposal to integrate local government operations both daily routine and emergency management was made by Urakawa et al.

We appreciate the support of the Special Project for Governance in Ubiquitous Society (2007-2009) by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Special Project for Metropolitan Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area (2007-2011) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT).

Lastly, we would like to appreciate all the authors for their wonderful contribution as well as all the blind reviewers for their dedication to make this issue more valuable.

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami claimed more than 220,000 lives. It was a low-probability high-consequence event. A similar disaster could strike elsewhere, particularly in the Pacific but also in Caribbean, Atlantic, and Mediterranean regions. Unlike in seismic ground shaking, there is usually a short lead-time precedes tsunami attack: from a few minutes for a local source to several hours for a distant source. Because mega-tsunamis are rare and because forewarning of these events is possible, the primary mitigation tactic to date has been evacuation. Hence, most efforts have focused on the development of effective warning systems, inundation maps, and tsunami awareness. This strategy makes sense from the standpoint of saving human lives. However, it does not address the devastating damage to buildings and critical coastal infrastructure, such as major coastal bridges, oil and LNG storage facilities, power plants, and ports and harbors. Failure in critical infrastructure creates enormous economic setbacks and collateral damage. The accelerating construction of critical infrastructure in the coastal zone demands a better understanding of design methodology in building tsunamiresistant structures. In some coastal areas such as low-elevation coastal spits or plains, evacuating people to higher ground may be impractical because they have no time to reach safety. In these situations, the only feasible way to minimize human casualties is to evacuate people to the upper floors of tsunami-resistant buildings. Such buildings must be designed and constructed to survive strong seismic ground shaking and subsequent tsunami impacts.

The primary causes of structural failure subject to tsunami attack can be categorized into three groups: 1) hydrodynamic force, 2) impact force by water-born objects, and 3) scour and foundation failure. Tsunami behaviors are quite distinct, however, from other coastal hazards such as storm waves; hence the effects cannot be inferred from common knowledge or intuition. Recent research has addressed tsunami forces acting on coastal structures to develop appropriate design guidelines, and mechanisms leading to tsunamigenerated scour and foundation failures.

This special issue is a compilation of 14 papers addressing tsunami effects on buildings and infrastructure. The four main groupings begin with two papers on tsunami force acting on vertical walls. Arikawa experimentally investigates the structural performance of wooden and concrete walls using a large-scale laboratory tank in Japan. Also using a similar large-scale tsunami flume but in the US, Oshnack et al. study force reduction by small onshore seawalls in front of a vertical wall. The second grouping focuses on tsunami force on 3-D structures. Arnason et al. present a basic laboratory study on the hydrodynamics of bore impingement on a vertical column. Fujima et al. examine the two types of formulae for tsunami force evaluation: the one calculated from flow depth alone and the other based on the Euler number. Lukkunaprasit et al. demonstrate the validity of force computation recommended in a recently published design guideline (FEMA P646) by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency. The other two papers look into the specific types of structures: one is for light-frame wood buildings by van de Lindt et al, and the other is for oil storage tanks by Sakakiyama et al.

The topic of debris impact force is the focus of the third grouping. Matsutomi summarizes his previous research on impact force by driftwoods, followed by the collision force of shipping containers by Yeom et al. Yim and Zhang numerically simulate tsunami impact on a vertical cylinder; this paper is included in this grouping because their numerical approach is similar to that of Yeom et al. As for the fourth grouping, Shuto presents field observations on foundation failures and scours, and Fujii et al. discuss the erosion processes of soil embankments. There are two more papers: those are the application of fragility analysis to tsunami damage assessment by Koshimura et al. and evaluation of an offshore cabled observatory by Matsumoto and Kaneda.

The topics presented here are undoubtedly in progress, and many revisions and improvements are still needed in order to achieve better predictability for tsunami effects on buildings and infrastructure. We hope you find the papers in this issue intriguing and the information useful, and become further interested in this important natural hazard. Lastly, we wish to express our appreciation to the authors for their timely contributions, and to the reviewers for their diligent and time-consuming efforts.

Thanks to the improvement of living standard and hygiene as well as to the development of the therapeutics, such as antimicrobial agents, diagnostics, vaccines, the mortality and morbidity rates due to infectious diseases have been dramatically improved in developed countries. However, the mortality and morbidity of infectious diseases, respiratory and gastrointestinal tract infections are still very high and the leading causes of fatalities in developing countries. Furthermore, emerging and reemerging infections frequently occur locally and internationally. For instance, the 2009 influenza virus A/H1N1-associated pandemic has emerged and raised public anxiety levels. It is evident that we live in an environment in which infectious diseases are commonly transmitted. Human activities are closely related to the emergence of newly identified infectious diseases.

In this issue, the background of the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases is reviewed. The infectious diseases that might raise public anxiety, such as Nipah encephalitis, rabies, and influenza are focused on and reviewed. The influenza pandemic and imported infectious diseases, which may cross borders, are also reviewed. Infectious diseases associated with natural disasters are reviewed for the sake of future preparedness. The hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers, cause severe infections and have very high mortality rates. The diagnostic systems developed for viral hemorrhagic fevers developed in Japan are introduced. The international situation regarding the development of biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories is introduced. In the review, it is emphasized that BSL-4 laboratories should be operated in Japan, although viral hemorrhagic fevers are not prevalent in Japan. Furthermore, preparedness strategies for large-scale outbreaks of infectious diseases are presented.

I believe these papers will help preparations against the infectious diseases associated with disastrous events. I would be very glad if the readers understood the background of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases and noticed that efficacious preparedness for such infections diseases, preparedness based on the scientific studies and empirical evidence, is urgently required.

Finally, I sincerely appreciate the contributions by the authors of and the reviewers for the papers, which appear in this issue of the journal, Journal of Disaster Research.

Japan and many other counties face the risk of the natural disaster such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. Natural disaster mitigation research and development are providing important, practical applications based on the development of the scientific technology.

One major contribution is early warning system, being backed by observation and communication technology progress. Early warning research and development have been extensively studied domestically and internationally. Specifically, recent developments in earthquake engineering research and construction of seismic dense network have made it possible to issue earthquake warnings before the arrival of severe shaking. Such warnings enable emergency measures to be taken to protect lives, buildings, infrastructure, and transport from earthquake depredations. One such system went into practical use nationwide in Japan starting on October 1, 2007. Development has been conducted with cooperation of government, academic community and non-government, and private organizations.

This special issue features papers on the early warning system for the natural disastermitigation covering issues ranging from natural science to social science. The recent developed earthquake early warning technology and its applications will be introduced. Besides earthquakes, the recent early warning technology for tsunami and flood are also included in this issue. The warning time available for tsunami and flood is much longer than that for earthquakes, and the contribution of numerical calculation using the real-time observation data differs with the type of disaster.

Finally I would like to express my deepest gratitude for anonymous reviewers of papers in this special issue.

Modern buildings have more complex, important functions than ever before, and damage to these functions adversely impacted on socioeconomic activity during and after the 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu Earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan. Although many such buildings protected the lives of occupants, their impaired functioning required costly structural and nonstructural repair.

Questions have been raised about conventional building structure performance enabling inelastic deformation or considerable damage during a major earthquake, as shown in Fig. 1a. Advanced technology such as building base isolation, shown in Fig. 1b, and passive control by dampers, shown in Fig. 1c, was developed prior to the Kobe disaster and became rapidly accepted after it, in line with a strong desire to better protect structural and nonstructural components. In base isolation, a building is placed on a flexible isolator that absorbs lateral ground movement, preventing vibration in the upper parts of the structure, as shown in Fig. 1b. In passive control, dampers connected to the structural frame dissipate seismic input energy, reducing kinetic energy and vibration of the building, as shown in Fig. 1c.

Such advanced technology is currently used for all major buildings and even for small residences in Japan to better protect buildings and their contents. Japan has produced a large number of buildings with the technology, and is believed to have conducted the most extensive research in realizing base isolation and passive control schemes.

This special issue of JDR addresses the present and future of Japan’s advanced technology with special reference to major activities related to design, construction, and research. Its purpose is to globally disseminate and share knowledge on promising schemes to help protect lives and social assets against catastrophic earthquakes.

This issue covers the current status of base isolation and passive control schemes, unique projects promoting technology for structurally challenging cases, building requirements necessitating the use of advanced technology, the status of current codes and specifications, and new directions in technology.

Papers in this issue were authored by leading structural designers and researchers in Japan, to whom we hereby express our deepest gratitude for their invaluable efforts.

The Committee on Disaster Mitigation under Global Changes of Natural and Social Environments, Science Council of Japan (SCJ), issued on May 30, 2007 a report, “Policies for Creation of a Safe and Secure Society against Increasing Natural Disasters around the World”.
The report, which includes an outline of Japan’s past responses to natural disasters of a global scale, provides a comprehensive discussion of a desirable direction for the development of infrastructure and social systems to meet the forthcoming changes in nature and society. Based on the report, the committee reported to the Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, in response to the minister’s former inquiry.

Another report was issued on countermeasures by adaptation to water-related disasters, following the former report and the result of discussions made in the subcommittee on June 26, 2008.
This special issue of JDR is based on the latter report of Science Council of Japan.
In Japan, over the past 30 years, the number of days of heavy rain with a daily rainfall of 200 mm or more have increased to about 1.5 times that of the first 30 years of the 20th century.
It has been pointed out that this is likely to have been caused by global warming. The Fourth report of the IPCC indicates that even low-end predictions implies an unavoidable temperature rise of about 2°C, and, even if the concentration of greenhouse gases is stabilized, the ongoing warming and sea level rise will continue for several centuries.

In terms of social systems, population and assets are increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas. At the same time, economic recession and aging of the population are accelerating especially in rural areas.
The central parts of small- and medium-size cities have lost vitality, and so-called marginal settlements are increasing in farming, forestry and fishing villages.
These factors make it difficult and complicated to maintain social functions to fight with natural disasters.

Under these circumstances, it is quite important in our country to take an action for adaptation to climate changes, where land is vulnerable to water-related disasters. The need for adaptation has widely been recognized in Europe, and various reports have been issued there. In Japan, initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases emission are being actively discussed, but both the central government and the people still do not fully recognize the importance of adaptation to water-related disasters.

Elsewhere, increases in extreme weather and climate events have caused flood disasters, such as those that have been occurring with larger frequency in the downstream deltas of Asian rivers. The latter type of disaster is exemplified by the unprecedented huge flood disaster that occurred in Myanmar in May in the last year. The increase of population in Asia will induce shortage of water resources in near future. Japan, which is in the Asian Monsoon Region, has a natural and social geography similar to these countries. Japan should implement strong assistance programs based on accumulated knowledge and advanced technologies developed.

To treat the adaptations mentioned in the above, there are many components to be considered such as follows:

(1) Reliable assessment of future climate, economic and social situation such as population.
(2) Developing physical and social infrastructures.
(3) Building disaster awareness and preparation in communities.
(4) Planning for recovery and restoration.
(5) Research and development for adaptation.
(6) International contributions for preventing water-related disasters.

In this special issue of JDR, these subjects are treated in series by introducing 5 papers written by leading researchers and engineer worked in the central government. However, the details of international contributions could not be included in this issue.

1. Introduction

It is expected that Tokyo Metropolitan area and her vicinity may be jolted by a devastating earthquake with a 70% chance for the next 30 years.
If it happens, an unprecedented scale of damage and losses may follow. With the severity of possible consequences due to this earthquake, a special project, entitled as “Special Project for Metropolitan Earthquake DisasterMitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area” (2007-2011), is commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT), This special project consists of three subprojects; Seismology, Earthquake Engineering, and Crisis Management and Recovery.
In this issue of JDR, we will introduce 10 papers produced as a series of the achievements from the subproject on Crisis Management and Recovery.
This subproject considers Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake as a national crisis occurred in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
All the available knowledge of disaster researchers should be gathered from nationwide, including both emergency response and long-term recovery to minimize damage and losses.

This project examines measures for improving the capacity for the people from disaster management organizations to react to crisis and help rebuilding life recovery of disaster victims. An information-sharing platform will be proposed to comprehensively manage individual disaster response and recovery measures. “Training and exercise systems” will be introduced to empower local capacity to mitigate and recover from disaster by integrating all of the project achievements among stakeholders. The final goal of this project is to make ourselves prepared for help the anticipated 25 million victims at most due to Tokyo Metropolitan earthquake.

The volcanic disasters are quite variable depending on the nature of the volcanic eruptions, the degrees of land-use surrounding the volcanic areas and preparedness against the eruptions. In order to mitigate the volcanic disasters, therefore, multidisciplinary approach is required. The International Volcanic Conference, “Cities on Volcanoes 5,” held in Shimabara Japan on the November 19-23, 2007 encouraged a wide range of people who are engaged in the volcanic disaster mitigation to gather to discuss topics related to volcanic eruptions and their hazards. The aim of this conference was to evaluate and improve mitigation measures, emergency management, and all required to successfully confront volcanic crises in densely populated area and to recover from any devastation. As the main topics discussed during the conference is quite adequate for the aim of this journal, this special issue tried to include papers read at the conference as many as possible. For the mitigation of the volcanic disasters, several different approaches should be included. Volcano monitoring through observation is the basis for most eruption forecasts and other measures for volcanic disaster mitigation. Impacts on human health and sustainability in volcanic areas in the fields of air and water pollution are also important issues to be included in the management of volcanic hazards. The practical lessons learned through the case histories of actual events should be shared to prepare for and respond to volcano crises that may affect communities. Hiroaki Takahashi proposes a method to estimate the real-time eruption magnitude that might be utilized to judge the duration of eruption in the early stage of eruption. Yoshikazu Kikawada et al. summarize arsenic pollution of rivers originated from the Kusatsu volcanic region. Tsuneomi Kagiyama and Yuichi Morita discuss the strategy to understand the preparing process of caldera forming eruption as a first step to assess the risk of gigantic eruption. Hiroshi Ikeya describes the prevention works executed by the central and local governments during and after the Mt. Unzen 1990-1995 eruption. Harry J. R. Keys summarizes the aspects of risk assessment and mitigation for a dome-break lahar that was predicted in 1995 and actually occurred on 18 March 2007 at Ruapehu volcano. Yoichi Nakamura et al. describe the mitigation systems on volcanic disasters in Japan emphasizing the importance of preparing hazard maps. We know the topics covered by this special issue do not represent the wide-ranging aspect of the conference, but include some significant portion. We hope that this special issue will be utilized to share the lessons learned through the practical trial to mitigate the actual disasters during the volcanic crisis.

Plants and animals are declining or becoming extinct in many parts of the world. They include both well-known species such as the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and the crested ibis (Nipponia nippon) and once common land snails, fireflies and small migratory birds. Factors leading to population decline or extinction include habitat destruction, chemical pollution, alien species, poaching, infectious disease, and global warming. In addition to their individual adverse impacts, these factors often overlap or interconnect in time and space, compounding their effects. In limited areas isolated by habitat destruction, for example, alien species and global warming more easily cause local populations to decline and become extinct.

There are also natural disasters such as volcanic activity and meteors that diminish or exterminate flora and fauna populations. However, extinction of species and groups sometimes give an opportunity for other species and groups to occupy vacant niche and similar life styles, which may lead to adaptive radiation in evolution. Organisms have repeated such evolution and extinction throughout geological history.

This special issue focuses on the extinction of plants and animals resulting from both human activity and natural disasters. In the first of seven articles, Hisashi Nagata reviews the history of extinction and the natural and human factors involved. Kazuto Kawakami looks at the impact of alien species on current ecosystems in the Ogasawara Islands, demonstrating interrelationships among different plant and animal species and pointing out what we could do about island ecosystem conservation and management. Haruo Ogi discusses the effects of fisheries by-catch on sea birds. TatsuyaKunisue and Shinsuke Tanabe detail the effects of chemical pollution on wild animals. Both factors are important in conserving biodiversity and in maintaining industries such as marine fisheries. Kazuya Ashizawa et al. focus on the population decline and extinction of plants growing along dry river beds and becoming rare as a result of human activities changing the structure of natural rivers. Yunshan Su deals with the history of the near extinction of crested ibises in China, and introduces successful recovery programs that may be useful in a similar Japanese program for the same species. Takashi Kamijo et al. detail the impact of volcanic activity on the vegetation of a small island, discussing ecosystem recovery.

We hope that this special issue will lead to better understanding of the unique interrelationships among plants, animals and the inorganic world, teaching how to conserve and manage the biodiversity around us. Extinction of one species may appear to have nothing to do with human lives, but the extinction of many plants and animals sets up serious conditions in maintaining life during the changing structure and function of ecosystems comparable in process to an aircraft losing rivets one by one and finally crashing at a critical point with massive loss of life.

Global warming precipitated by human activity in turn affects plants and animals in addition to human life. This special issue on Climate Change (Part 2) presents two reviews on the biological effects of global warming. Higuchi discusses how plants have started to bloom, leaf, and bear fruits earlier than 30 years ago. Birds have started laying eggs earlier than 25 years ago and migrating and singing — both related to breeding — earlier than before. Other changes include a shift in the ranges of some plants and animals northward or to higher elevations. One problem resulting from these changes are distortions or mismatches in biological interactions such as predation, pollination, seed dispersion, and parasitism because changes in phenology and habitation ranges vary by species and groups. newpage Global warming is thus also affecting biodiversity and changing ecosystem structures and functioning. In the second review, Kobayashi et al. show how global warming is changing the habitation range of disease-transmitting insects such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas. Because insects are cold-blooded, their activities are strongly influenced by environmental temperature. Changes in the distribution of disease-transmitting “vector” insects in turn change the distribution of disease. Summarizing his review, Higuchi wrote that “From a cynical point of view, it could be said that we are currently making an experiment on a global scale to investigate when and how our warming of the entire globe will affect the natural world and our own lifestyles.”

Climate change due to global warming is one of the most urgent issues for the society in the 21st century. It is anticipated that the climate change causes various impacts to our society such as natural disasters, food and water shortage, new diseases, and so on. Especially, natural disasters will give strong damage to the infrastructure of our society. When we think natural disaster, we tend to think the earthquake causes severe damage to the society, however, in reality, disaster associated with heavy rainfall is more severe. In short, changes of patterns and intensity of the precipitation is considered to cause severe impacts to the society.

Precipitation is realized in a cloud system, which is 10 km scale. This cannot be resolved in the large-scale atmospheric model, which is used to the present numerical weather prediction (NWP) and global warming simulation. Therefore, we have to interpret information given by the large-scale NWP model and climate model. For that purpose, we need knowledge about the convection system and its interaction with the large-scale circulation.

In this volume, papers relating to the understanding of convection in the present climate and the change in the future climate will be presented. A new possibility of simulating a convective system is also presented. I hope that these papers may help you to take an action to mitigate and adapt the disaster.

In this issue of Journal of Disaster Research, we introduce nine papers on societal responses to recent catastrophic disasters with special focus on long-term recovery processes in Japan and the United States. As disaster impacts increase, we also find that recovery times take longer and the processes for recovery become more complicated. On January 17th of 1995, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit the Hanshin and Awaji regions of Japan, resulting in the largest disaster in Japan in 50 years. In this disaster which we call the Kobe earthquake hereafter, over 6,000 people were killed and the damage and losses totaled more than 100 billion US dollars. The long-term recovery from the Kobe earthquake disaster took more than ten years to complete. One of the most important responsibilities of disaster researchers has been to scientifically monitor and record the long-term recovery process following this unprecedented disaster and discern the lessons that can be applied to future disasters. The first seven papers in this issue present some of the key lessons our research team learned from the studying the long-term recovery following the Kobe earthquake disaster.

We have two additional papers that deal with two recent disasters in the United States – the terrorist attacks on World Trade Center in New York on September 11 of 2001 and the devastation of New Orleans by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures. These disasters have raised a number of new research questions about long-term recovery that US researchers are studying because of the unprecedented size and nature of these disasters’ impacts. Mr. Mammen’s paper reviews the long-term recovery processes observed at and around the World Trade Center site over the last six years. Ms. Johnson’s paper provides a detailed account of the protracted reconstruction planning efforts in the city of New Orleans to illustrate a set of sufficient and necessary conditions for successful recovery.

All nine papers in this issue share a theoretical framework for long-term recovery processes which we developed based first upon the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake and later expanded through observations made following other recent disasters in the world. The following sections provide a brief description of each paper as an introduction to this special issue.

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The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 revealed the vulnerability of modern cities to earthquakes, not in the damage to structures but also to the lives of people, local communities, and the economy. As a result, recovery and reconstruction have become indispensable to all aspects of modern cities. With the earthquake almost 12 years in the past and recovery and reconstruction almost completed, it is time for us to look back on the process.

This issue (JDR Vol.2 No.5) features a roundup of post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction, including viewpoints on the challenges faced in the wake of massive damage and injury, destruction of over 400,000 damaged houses and infrastructure lifeline facilities such as water, electricity, and gas, and the collapse and rebuilding of local communities and the economy.

This issue follows recovery and reconstruction and provides information on processes that could be useful in the case of a large earthquake in the future.