IRIDeS Newsletter | International Research Institute of Disaster Science

2021.2.4

Preserving the Ruins of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Nakahama Elementary School

Assoc. Prof. Masashige Motoe Disaster Information Management and Public Collaboration Division 　In September 2020, the former school building of Nakahama Elementary School in Yamamoto Town, Miyagi was opened to the public as a site to preserve the ruins of the 2011 disaster. On March 11, 2011, 90 people including school children, faculty members, and parents fled from the approaching giant tsunami to the roof of the school building and spent the night in its at...

2021.1.29

Exploration of Fundamental Elements of Hospital Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) Based on Lessons Learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake

Associate Professor Hiroyuki Sasaki Disaster Medical Science Division ▷Introduction Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) are plans that are prepared and formulated for a given business in order to minimize damages, to keep the business’s core parts operational, and to recover quickly in case of emergencies—such as the occurrence of a disaster caused by a natural hazard. In Japan, companies have been taking the initiative in establishing BCPs since the b...

2020.12.4

Work on Drive-Through PCR Testing for Screening COVID-19 as a DMAT Member

Assistant Professor Yohei Inaba Disaster Medical Science Division 　Assist. Prof. Yohei Inaba of IRIDeS is an expert in the field of radiation disaster medicine. His research interests include how to estimate an individual radiation dose quickly during a radiation disaster. Alongside his research and educational activities, Inaba has also started working as a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) member back in December 2018. 　DMATs consist of trained doctors, n...

2020.11.27

Final Debriefifing Meeting on the 2019 Typhoon Hagibis

The 2019 Typhoon Hagibis (Typhoon No. 19) caused extensive infrastructure damage, with 59 people killed in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures. IRIDeS and the Tohoku branches of the Japan Organization of Civil Engineers, the Japanese Geotechnical Society, and the Japan Landslide Society have been working together in order to examine the actual damages caused by the typhoon. On November 20, 2020, the final debriefing meeting on the typhoon disaster was held online. During the meeting,...

2020.8.27

Accurate Dating of Paleotsunamis in Eastern Hokkaido Through High-Precision Sediment Analysis

Assist. Professor Takashi Ishizawa Disaster Science Division ▷Introduction 　The Japanese archipelago has been hit by subduction-zone earthquakes and the tsunamis caused by them many times; these earthquakes and tsunamis had a certain degree of periodicity. The actual mechanism of a subduction-zone earthquake is complex, and thus the interval between earthquakes and tsunamis is calculated only as a rough estimation. However, it is extremely important to learn from...