The National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED) is working on three tasks: predicting disasters, preventing damage, and realizing speedy reconstruction and recovery efforts in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, torrential rains, blizzards, and ice storms.

In the last two years of the NIED’s fourth mid/long term plan period, which began in 2016, the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake (M6.5 and M7.3), the heavy rainfall in the Northern Kyushu District in July 2017, and the heavy rain event of July 2018 are listed as “named” disasters, named by Japan Meteorological Agency. In addition, there were other disasters: an avalanche accident on Nasudake in 2017, an earthquake (M6.1) with its epicenter in northern Osaka, an eruption of Kirishimayama (Shinmoedake and Ioyama) and a phreatic eruption of Kusatsu-Shiranesan in 2018.

The results of research done on the above-mentioned disasters and the latest results of ongoing projects in each research division and center were compiled as the second NIED special issue of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR). In this special issue, we are delighted to present ten papers on three topics: climatic disasters, seismic disasters, and integrated research on disaster risk reduction. In particular, this special issue contains three papers on the above-mentioned heavy rainfall in the Northern Kyushu District in July 2017 and two papers related to the Kumamoto earthquake.

Although the achievements detailed in these papers are the results of individual research, the NIED hopes that these results as a whole will be fully utilized to promote science and technology for disaster risk reduction and resilience. The NIED hopes that this special issue awakens the readers’ interest in new research and, of course, creates an opportunity for further collaborative works with us.