Increasing numbers of devastating weather events such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and tornadoes in the US and Japan are suggesting that nature’s destructive power is having a growing worldwide impact.

These events follow the occurrence of such disasters as Cyclone Sidr in 2007 in Bangladesh and Cyclone Nargis in 2008 in Myanmar, especially in the alarming numbers of deaths and injuries and concomitant property loss.

The wind engineering community has taken the initiative in globally promoting wind hazard research and education over the last several decades and is continuing to devote its efforts and energy to producing and providing techniques in advanced wind hazard mitigation to developing countries prone to typhoons and cyclones.

Mitigating the effects of wind hazards on a global plane has thus become a top priority because most of the economic and other loss due globally to natural disasters is caused by extreme wind and water events. Calamitous tropical cyclones generally bring with them high waves, storm surges, heavy rain, flooding, landslides and lightning.

This ongoing process underscores the pressing need to pool expertise and cooperation in reducing such loss. The loss of lives and related financial loss and waste due to such disasters is continuing to increase significantly. It has therefore been hypothesized that global warming and climate change are potentially exacerbating such scenarios as the intensity of weather-related disasters grows.

This special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research focusing on wind-induced disasters is thus both meaningful and timely. As the Guest Editor, I am most pleased to have this opportunity to present and share the latest in knowledge, information and resources on wind damage mitigation to all those working in mitigation efforts and to society as a whole.

Finally, I extend our sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles.

We have been conducting seismic hazard assessment for Japan under the guidance of the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion of Japan since the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu Earthquake, and have made National Seismic Hazard Maps for Japan for use in estimating strong ground motion caused by future earthquakes.

This special issue reviews the results of these efforts. Such work includes the development of seismic hazard assessment methodology for Japan, highly accurate prediction techniques for strong seismic ground motion and modeling underground structures for evaluating strong ground motion. Related research on utilization initiatives and risk assessment based on hazard information has also been conducted. An open Web system – the Japan Seismic Hazard Information Station (J-SHIS) – has even been developed to provide information interactively.

The 2011 Mw9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake was the largest such event recorded in the history of Japan. This megathrust earthquake was not considered in National Seismic Hazard Maps for Japan. But efforts toward revising seismic hazard assessment in Japan are progressing based on lessons learned from this earthquake.

Hazard assessment is currently being reviewed in relation to the large earthquakes anticipated to occur in the near future based in the Sagami Trough and the Nankai Trough in the waters of offshore Japan. This assessment, which considers earthquakes larger than those assumed to have occurred in the past, is being reviewed as of this writing.

In light of these pressing circumstances, studies are now being implemented to evaluate the long-period ground motion accompanying these large earthquakes.

The knowledge that has been cultivated in Japan in terms of seismic hazard assessment has reached a high level, and it is important to expand such knowledge both internationally and domestically. This is just one of the reasons that efforts here in Japan are being made to help improve the level of seismic hazard assessment in the Asian region and throughout the entire world.

It is expected that this special issue will help contribute to the further development of strong ground motion prediction and seismic hazard assessment now and in the future.

Finally, I extend our sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles.

The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), published bimonthly in English since 2006 as a Japan-based academic journal, promotes multidisciplinary research on disaster reduction due to all hazards – natural, unintended and intended.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster on March 11, 2011, we have worked as our duty to provide a forum for all stakeholders and researchers in the world to describe what happened scientifically in terms of human and property damage and in subsequent social and economic damage by this unprecedented occurrence, including the incident involving Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

As one contribution, JDR is publishing special annual issues for the next five years on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster – with NO PAGE CHARGES TO CONTRIBUTORS. This effort began in 2012.

The purpose of these special issues is to record, communicate and share the lessons learned from this disaster.

In our second special issue, 16 papers were submitted and we are proud to introduce 11 papers touching on different aspects of the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster. We are sure you will find these papers interesting and informative.

We also look forward to receiving contributions for the third special issue, which will be published in the summer of 2014.

This special issue is sponsored by following companies. We deeply appreciate their cooperation.

Silver sponsor: Esri Japan Corporation

Bronze sponsor: CALBEE, Inc.

Bronze sponsor: NIKKEN SEKKEI

An unprecedented M9.0 earthquake occurring at 14:46 local time on March 11, 2011, off of northeast Japan’s Pacific Ocean generated a huge tsunami which had a run-up of over 40 m at the highest point and nearly 20,000 lives were lost. The tsunami demonstrated the need to drastically readdress current tsunami countermeasures.

“Guidebook for Tsunami Preparedness in Local Hazard Mitigation Planning” published prior to the March 11 tsunami had already estimated, as one of the cases of tsunami assumptions, that the tsunami could be generated by the largest earthquake near off the Sanriku Coast predicted by the recent seismology. The seismotectonics had predicted that off the Sanriku Coast consisted of three independent blocks, which could conceivably cause an M8.6 earthquake at the largest. However, three blocks were not independent and they moved continuously to yield an earthquake of M9.0.

The Guidebook had recommended a combination of three approaches for handling such a tsunami; Construction of defense structures, Tsunami-resilient town development, and Disaster prevention systems – defense structures were not expected to completely prevent every tsunami but only reduce its effect. Caissons forming part of Kamaishi Port’s tsunami breakwaters and registered in Guinness World Records, were overturned but reduced the tsunami height from 14 m outside the port to 8 m inside. Many coastal dikes were also destroyed, even though three surfaces – fore slope, top slope, and rear slope – had been protected using concrete and other means. Such phenomena pinpoint the importance of toe protection against erosion.

Since 2004, tsunami inundation hazard maps have been distributed to communities in Japan as an aid to public education and as part of the country’s nationwide disaster prevention system. Unexpectedly, these maps had a negative effect in many places where residents living outside inundation areas mentioned on the hazard maps believed they were safe under all condition. Many did not in fact keep track of the actual tsunami rising in front of their very eyes and not evacuate, thus losing their lives.

The tsunami hitting the coast of the Fukushima Prefecture had a run-up height almost double that designed in defense plans. The Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Plants of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) located on ground 4.8 m above sea level were immerged and a concurrent electric system failure led to total plant shutdown.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster itself has become well known worldwide. The effects of the tsunami, however, are less so, despite damage such as fires, railroad destruction and drifting ships caused by the tsunami. With the nuclear incident overshadowing such effects, we are concerned that these results might be overlooked.

To better prepare against potential future tsunami disasters, we must understand clearly what sort and how such diverse damage has been generated by the 2011 tsunami. This special issue focuses on the various types of tsunami-induced damages, emphasizing the valuable data and modeling obtained from field investigations in the tsunami-devastated areas. It will be more than worth publication if this special issue contributes in whatever way to furthering tsunami disaster research.

Finally, we extend our sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles.

(written by Nobuo Shuto and Tomoyuki Takahashi)

“Dual use” can be defined as potential use of science and technology for destructive purpose as well as for constructive purposes. While the history of the dual use is long (such as, debate on atomic energy), after the anthrax incident in the wake of the terrorist attack of World Trade Center in New York on September 2001, “dual use” issue surfaced as the matter of “biosecurity.” The debate on biosecurity was further ignited by the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity’s recommendation on the publication of experiments dealing with the host range expansion of the avian influenza virus H5N1.

The present special issue deals with the “dual use” mainly from the “biosecurity” view point, including the bioweapon and its history, biosecurity negotiation in the Biological Weapon Convention, regulatory framework of use of pathogens and its implementation, ethical issues, education of the “dual use” issues for life scientists, the feasibility of direct application of the published data to the dual use and the recent progress of synthetic biology and its biosecurity implication.

The present guest editor wishes that these articles will stimulate debate on “dual use” issues in various branches of science and technology, as he realizes that “dual use” issue is becoming prominent not only in microbiological researches but also in other activities, such as, IT, robotics, neuroscience, psychology, economics, etc. He extends his sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles.

Numerous global water disasters have devastated many regions, and some may be due to climate change. Severe water disasters not only may inflict heavily damage on industry but may also leave many persons dead or seriously injured.

The 2011 Thailand flood is a typical example of such disasters. In it, a wide area of the Chao Phraya River basin, where Bangkok is located, was inundated for a long period. Damage by the flood affected not only the domestic scene but also economies and industries all over the world. Many academicians and researchers have executed field surveys from various academic aspects and have studied flood disasters to clarify what actually occurred and to consider what must be done to mitigate such flood events in the future.

The Journal of Disaster Research has planned a special issue on this severe flooding in Thailand. Having participated in field surveys and found the flood worth studying more deeply, I decided to contribute to this special issue as a Guest Editor.

This special issue contains 9 articles, 7 papers and 2 reports, all of which have been peer-reviewed. The broad topics covered range from a detailed field survey to flood and inundation simulation.

I would like to extend sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved in producing these articles. Especially, I would especially like to express my gratitude to Dr. Hiroshi Takebayashi, Associate Professor, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan, for his great support. I look forward with great anticipation to any feedback that readers may be able to provide regarding these articles.

Natural disasters are major threats worldwide, with earthquakes and tsunamis presenting major obstacles to sustainable development, especially in Asia-Pacific countries. Natural hazards must be understood and social resilience improved to reduce the risks of disaster. Because earthquakes and tsunamis are rare but devastating events, data must be collected on a global scale, making international collaboration is inevitable for reducing loss due to these events.

A new international research program called the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) started in 2008 jointly sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Our proposal, entitled Enhancement of Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Mitigation Technology in Peru, was designated as one of the projects in the field of natural disaster prevention in April 2009. Since this project officially started in March 2010, the research program has been promoted by five groups – seismic motion and geotechnical, tsunami, buildings, spatial information database and damage assessment, and disaster mitigation planning – through the strong collaboration of Peruvian and Japanese researchers and stakeholders.

Midway through the project, we decided to publish our research results in the form of English technical papers so that a wide and global range of researchers and practitioners could take advantage of our findings.

This special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research contains 15 articles – an overview of the project and its progress and 14 peer-reviewed papers covering aspects ranging from earthquake and tsunami hazards to risk reduction.

We extend our sincere thanks to all of the contributors and reviewers involved with these articles. We would further deeply appreciate feedback from readers on these papers to prepare for a second special JDR volume on this project within the next two years.

1. Extreme Weather and Water-Related Disasters

Extreme weather events frequently take place in many parts of the world, causing various kinds of water-related disasters such as windstorms, floods, high tides, debris flows, droughts, and water-quality issues. This is a key issue for the sustainability and survivability of our society.

The Asian and Pacific region is one of the most disaster-prone areas in the world. It is very adversely affected by natural hazards such as cyclones and typhoons and tsunami caused by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions under the sea. These natural hazards bring severe disasters to all countries in the region where social change, in terms of population and economic growth, is the most dynamic in the world.

Growth in this region of the world has not, however, led to advances in disaster risk management. The situation is getting worse because infrastructure development cannot keep up with growth. Policies for poverty reduction and alleviation are insufficient and the difference between being rich and being poor is increasing.

Vulnerable populations are often those hit worst by hazards and disasters. As the world’s cities expand to occupy ever greater portions of the world’s flood plains, riversides and shorelines, the risk of flooding will continue to outpace both structural and nonstructural mitigation efforts.

“A natural hazard strikes when persons lose their memory of the previous one.” This quotation is from Dr. Torahiko Terada (1878-1935), a former Professor of the University of Tokyo who influenced many Japanese persons as an educator, physicist and philosopher. Persons tend to forget bad memories if they do not experience a similar event for a long time. This lack of experience and ignorance increases the vulnerability of society to disasters.

The 9th International Conference on Urban Earthquake Engineering (9th CUEE) and the 4th Asia Conference on Earthquake Engineering (4th ACEE) were jointly held on March 6-8, 2012 in Tokyo, as a part of the research activities of the Center for Urban Earthquake Engineering (CUEE), Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan.

The conference featured state-of-the-art technical presentations on various themes relevant to urban earthquake engineering, followed by special sessions addressing the 11th March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami that resulted in catastrophic damage and an estimated death toll of 20,000. The conference attracted 465 participants from 31 countries, and disseminated 283 papers.

The board members of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) decided to publish special issues of JDR, selecting papers from the above joint conference, for the purpose of mainly updating status of Japan’s research/technology. The present issue is on the fields of engineering seismology and geotechnical engineering, including extraordinary ground shaking and liquefactions that affected wide areas during the March 11 incident. Other issues such as those on buildings and infrastructures are also planned.

The 8 manuscripts selected and managed by the JDR Guest Editors address the following topics:

– Array observations of ground shaking

– Large peak ground acceleration and site amplification

– Attenuation of the seismic wave

– Impact against the water-supply outages

– Liquefaction in a river levee on soft cohesive ground

– Spread foundation performance affecting superstructure

– Performance of piled raft foundation with grid-form ground improvement

– Liquefaction of levee body and seepage control

The Guest Editors as well as JDR board members thank the authors for their contributions and revisions. They also acknowledge gratefully the reviewers for their invaluable comments on the manuscripts.

Large natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons often produce many refugees, forcing them to live inconvenient and unsanitary lives in temporary places of refuge. Even if they can remain in their homes, hygienic conditions may be worsened by interrupted electricity, water, fuel and other lifelines.

Winter disasters bring more concerns, such as influenza and cold weather, while those in summer raise problems of diarrhea-related disease.

Two of Japan’s largest recent earthquakes, the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, did not cause large infectious disease outbreaks thanks to proper countermeasures. Even so, such outbreaks frequently occur worldwide.

One recent example is the 2010 cholera outbreak following an earthquake in Haiti. In an added complication, it is thought that the outbreak was from a foreign source – an Asian epidemic strain of cholera.

Many refugees have resulted from ethnic and tribal conflicts in Africa. In a visit to Kenya as a short-term expert for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), I observed a cholera outbreak in a Somali refugee camp. Health facilities at the camp were extremely bad, with the occurrence of drought adding to the suffering in these regions.

Many developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions have problems of insufficient food supplies due to recent population growth. Disasters breaking out in these areas leave an unwelcome legacy of undernourishment and malnutrition, especially among young children. In this situation, the number of fatalities due to diarrhea is very high. Such fatalities are fewer in developed countries, but diarrhea in children under 5 years of age in developing countries remains a serious problem. World Health Organization (WHO) statistics published this year show that the global number of deaths in 2010 of children under 5 was some 76 million, 10% of which suffered from diarrhea-related disease. Malaria, pneumonia, premature birth, birth asphyxia and neonatal sepsis are additional causes of these deaths.

This special issue details the countermeasures taken against infectious diseases in recent large disasters.

As stated above, no serious outbreaks of infection were observed in the Great East Japan Earthquake, but damage to a local atomic power plant was extensive, as reported by the mass media. In addition to refugees from the earthquake and tsunami, many residents near the atomic power plant were forced to move out of their homes and towns because of the possible release of radiation, even though their homes had not been destroyed or even damaged.

The lack of serious infectious disease outbreaks were more than made up for, however, by many problems with infectious disease. The subject of infectious disease risk and public health recovery is described by Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani of Tohoku University. Another article covers communicable diseases following the Great Earthquake described by Dr. Kentaro Iwata of Kobe University.

The Great Earthquake and resulting tsunami in Sumatra, Indonesia, in December 2005 left more than 2,300,000 victims. Because this happened in a tropical region, public health control, especially food sanitation, was the worst problem. Dr. Nasronudin of Airlangga University in Indonesia communicates his experiences in this situation.

The 2011 Haiti earthquake also involved a tropical region. As a Central American country, Haiti has had no experience with cholera in nearly a century and faces a cholera outbreak after the earthquake. Dr. G. B. Nair a cholera specialist at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute of India, investigated the situation in Haiti and found that the causative strain was an Asian epidemic cholera. We therefore asked Dr. Nair to write about the Haiti cholera epidemic.

Global microbial culture collection facilities have many microbial stocks that, if somehow released by a disaster, would cause at least two serious problems – one of environmental pollution by pathogenic organisms triggering infectious disease and another of the loss of valuable microbial resources. This makes it vital to maintain safe, secure culture collections against disasters. Dr. Takayuki Ezaki, Gifu University, describes this subject.

Finally, we thank the authors for their contributions and the reviewers for their invaluable comments.

The 5th International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM5) was held on September 27-29, 2011 in Tokyo under the umbrella title “Floods: from risk to opportunity” focused on flood management and disaster mitigation measures in its plenary, oral, and poster sessions. Out of over 250 presented papers, 120 manuscripts – far more than expected – were contributed for post-publication in the Journal of Flood Risk Management, the IAHS Red Book and the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). Editorial staff members of the JDR, which was independent of ICFM5, attended the conference to survey research activities in related study fields and to announce JDR strategies to participants. The ICHARM scientific committee supervising ICFM5 post-publications is well acquainted with JDR, which is one of the reasons for agreeing on this special issue.

The 13 manuscripts presented for consideration by JDR concern the following topics:

– Flood forecasting

– Basic tools for evaluating inundation flows

– Flood management practices and policies

– Flood plain management

– Relations between human activities and floods

These topics range from novel studies to public statements and have been reviewed as papers, reviews, and survey reports. This resulted in 9 papers recommended for the special issue – 4 topics for papers, 1 topic for review, and 4 topics for reports.

We thank the authors for their contributions and revisions and the reviewers for their invaluable comments. We also thank the ICHARM committee members for introducing authors to special publications for JDR.

Concerned experts and others from a wide range of fields are required to take part in studies on “social” disaster phenomena such as earthquakes and typhoons causing drastic human and property damage and leaving subsequent social and economic destruction. In 2006, the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) decided to be published as an academic journal in English for global society to help expand research beyond a domestic scope. The March 11, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster – in the 6th year of the journal’s publication, has made an impact both domestically and globally due to the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami and resulting radiation leakage at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. JDR will annually publish special issues on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster beginning in this issue of 2012, for five years, for the purpose of informing, recording and utilizing lessons learned from the disaster. Page charges are in principle free and widespread contributions are welcomed.

I have studied disasters from the viewpoint of a planner. Nobody who is active and living in society is irrelevant to wide-scale events related to such disasters, and I still feel that it is important for people from a variety of fields to visit devastated sites, hear from the people experiencing such disasters and make their own standpoints. In American society, for example, disaster measures against earthquakes and other disasters have been studied involving a wide range of experts and others. After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, research groups consisting of wide range of experts came to be formed in Japan and environments developed to produce a multidisciplinary journal such as the JDR. The ultimate goal of planned research is human research. A society is needed in which “human power” can be manifested in all aspects such as reviving reconstruction and rehabilitation. This is because contributions by researchers from widespread fields are anticipated in the future.

This special issue is sponsored by following companies. We deeply appreciate their cooperation.

Gold sponsor: KAJIMA CORPORATION

Gold sponsor: MORITA HOLDINGS CORPORATION

Bronze sponsor: NIKKEN SEKKEI

Among the lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, there were a large number of new findings, including which preparations functioned as planned and which did not. Now that a year has elapsed since the earthquake disaster, the parties concerned need to reexamine those measures which are yet to be implemented since we should not see the same results after a large scale disaster in the future as those we saw in the past.

In this JDR Special Issue on Business Continuity Plan (BCP), I tried to ask for papers not only from academia but also from business fields to make this issue practical and useful to be leveraged for our next steps in preparing for incoming disasters. As a result, this issue obtains papers from various fields from academia to financial businesses and also with several different approaches which includes actual real case studies.

Many of papers in this issue focus on intangible part of business continuity activities that is different from the traditional disaster management approaches which have mainly focused on tangibles or hardware reinforcement against natural disasters.

Recent wide-area disasters taught us the importance of intangibles and we should start discussions more in details with aspects such as corporate value, emergency transportation & logistics, training & exercises, funding arrangement, and management systems. I hope that discussions and insights in this issue will help our discussions and actions to move forward.

Finally, I really thank the authors’ insightful contributions and the referees’ intensive professional advices to make this JDR Special Issue valuable to our society in preparing for incoming disasters.

The outbreak of Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Miyazaki Prefecture in 2010 has turned out to be the most striking disaster in the history of animal hygiene in Japan, from the points such as the number of the animals culled and buried or the human resources required until the time of termination. Inquiry committees for FMD countermeasures established by Miyazaki Prefecture and by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have pointed out the various issues in disease control measures taken during the period starting from the outbreak till the termination. As a result, amendments were made to the Act on Domestic Animal Infectious Diseases Control in April of 2011, and in October, to the Standards of Rearing Hygiene Management.

The outbreak of Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Miyazaki Prefecture in 2010 has turned out to be the most striking disaster in the history of animal hygiene in Japan, from the points such as the number of the animals culled and buried or the human resources required until the time of termination. Inquiry committees for FMD countermeasures established by Miyazaki Prefecture and by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries have pointed out the various issues in disease control measures taken during the period starting from the outbreak till the termination. As a result, amendments were made to the Act on Domestic Animal Infectious Diseases Control in April of 2011, and in October, to the Standards of Rearing Hygiene Management.

Diseases that cause damage to domestic animals including FMD are presented in this special issue. I hope that this special issue will contribute to the betterment of animal hygiene and furthermore to the enhancement of dietary life.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the authors and reviewers for their great contributions to this issue.

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. The worstcase scenario for Tokyo Metropolitan earthquake is a M7.3 earthquake beneath northern Tokyo Bay. According to the Central Disaster Prevention Council, A total of 12,000 people will be dead and economic losses will exceed 112 trillion yen. Areas with a seismic intensity of JMA 6 – and more will include Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, and Kanagawa, resulting in 25 million victims – 20% of Japan’s total population. No country has not experienced such a large-scale earthquake in recorded history, but it does not mean such a disaster will not occur. In order to cope with such an unprecedented disaster, we must face and solve a lot of new problems in addition to all of existing problems appeared in the past disasters. Thus it is mandatory to take a holistic approach to implement effectively and seamlessly emergency response, relief, and long-term recovery.

With the severity of possible consequences due to this earthquake, a special project, entitled as “Special Project for Earthquake Disaster Mitigation 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. 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.

In this issue of JDR, we will introduce 10 papers from the subproject on Crisis Management and Recovery as a part of the achievements of this subproject for the last five years.

Natural disasters and their mitigation are global issues, especially in Asian countries, which have suffered from such geohazards as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions and such hydrometeorological hazards as typhoons, cyclones, storm surges, and floods.

Research on natural hazards and disasters is multidisciplinary. Scientists from a wide variety of disciplines study hazards, their causes, their mechanisms, and prediction. Engineers study infrastructures and measures to reduce vulnerability. Social and humanitarian scientists study cultural and societal aspects of disasters. Educators study effective ways to raise people’s awareness and action. In addition to such research activities, practitioners work to implement the results of scientific research into practical policymaking.

This special issue of JDR contains 12 papers on multidisciplinary studies concerning geohazards in Indonesia taken from a Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) project supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). SATREPS projects focus on both the scientific aspect, namely, acquiring new knowledge, and the Official Development Aids (ODA) aspect, namely, implementing such knowledge in societal applications.

Following the first review article, which is a project overview, the next four papers report findings on natural hazards – the slip rate on the Lembang fault in Java, tsunami simulation for Java’s Palabuhanratu, the Sinabung volcano eruption in Sumatra, and methods of predicting and evaluating eruptions. One paper reports engineering studies on tsunami disaster mitigation in Padang city and two social science papers present hazards in the contexts of communities and human mobility. Two papers on disaster education cover disaster education development since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the use of tsunami simulation in disaster education. The last research paper and review article deal with policymaking related to the 2010 Mentawai and 2011 Japan tsunamis, respectively.

All of these papers, including the review articles, have been peer-reviewed by two nonproject reviewers. We thank the authors for their timely contributions and revisions, and the reviewers for their invaluable and wide-ranging comments.

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.