Since the fiscal year 2018, Assistant Professor Shuji Seto and Professor Fumihiko Imamura of IRIDeS have been analyzing data on the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which was provided by the Miyagi Prefectural Police Headquarters. The research team continues to explore deaths by the earthquake and tsunami, while considering how to reduce casualties in the future. Every year in February, the research team holds a press conference to share the progress of the research with the media and society in general.

 

 

  

Dr. Fumihiko Imamura and Dr. Shuji Seto

 

 

On February 18, 2022, the team held the fourth press conference online to summarize and report on their findings during the fiscal year 2021. In the previous years, their focus has been mainly on casualties on land; this year, they provided a detailed analysis of the 568 people found at sea, and made suggestions on how to cope with hypothermia risks.

At the conference, Dr. Seto mentioned that the number of victims found at sea was higher in Ishinomaki City, Onagawa Town, and Kesennuma City, respectively. He also pointed out that the risk of people flowing out to the sea was higher around the Rias coastline than in the plain areas. Based on their research findings, the team also developed a hypothermia risk checklist, which was also shown in the conference. Dr. Imamura provided a supplementary explanation of the tsunami mechanism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approximately 15 journalists and reporters attended the conference and asked many questions; they were mainly from the news and science departments of newspapers and television media in the Sendai and Tokyo areas. As Seto commented, “One of the important issues is how to protect lives in case people outflow to the sea, and how to find and rescue them as soon as possible. We will challenge these new issues shown in the conference this time. We would like to find ways to decrease people who lose their lives in the sea in a future tsunami disaster, as well as ways to reduce missing and unidentified people.”

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