In 2018, Japan not only had an abnormally hot summer, but also experienced successive disasters, including the Northern Osaka Earthquake, the Western Japan Heavy Rain, Typhoon No. 21, the Hokkaido ...Mid Iburi Earthquake, and Typhoon No. 24. In particular, the record-breaking heavy rains continued in a large area of Western Japan from June 28 to July 4, due to the storm front and Typhoon No. 7. The amount of rainfall totaled over 1,800 mm in the Shikoku Region and 1,200 mm in the Tokai Region. The quantity of rain that fell within 48 and 72 hours in both the Chugoku and Kinki Regions, as well as many other areas, was the highest rainfall ever recorded. A special warning regarding heavy rain was issued in 10 prefectures and every kind of disaster that Japan had experienced recently occurred in various locations. As of August 21, a report from Disaster Management Section, Cabinet Office indicated 221 deaths, 9 missing persons, 68 severely injured persons, 319 slightly injured persons, 3 persons with an unknown level of injury, 6,206 destroyed homes, 9,764 severely-damaged homes, 3,765 partially-destroyed homes, 9,006 homes with flooding above the first-floor level, and 20,086 houses with flooding below the first-floor level.
During this large-scale disaster, which was named the Western Japan Heavy Rain, the Disaster Relief Act was applied to 110 municipalities and JDR decided to issue a special edition to address issues pertinent to this specific disaster event. Paper submissions were requested that not only comprised demonstrative researches on hazard and damage characteristics, methods of evacuation, and features of disaster response, but also included introductions of best practices, which were conducted in various fields and prompted diverse collaboration to develop and establish measures to mediate the effect of the future Nankai Trough Earthquake, as well as problems and solutions to successfully realize diverse collaboration. In response to the call for papers for the special issue, nine researches were submitted and six were accepted following a strict review process. To address the category of hazard characteristics analyses, two papers analyzing the characteristics of the flooding resulting from the Western Japan Heavy Rain and one paper comprising an analysis of landslide disasters were accepted. In the category of disaster response, one paper focusing on the use of SNS and two papers regarding the elderly were accepted. It would be our sincere pleasure if this special issue could contribute to future reductions in damage resulting from natural disasters.
On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck the Tokyo metropolitan area of Japan. It was an extremely powerful earthquake that caused a great fire. The death toll reached approximately ...105,000, and the economic loss is estimated to have exceeded 30% of the Japanese gross national product at that time.
For September 2023, the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) has planned a special issue to commemorate 100 years since the Great Kanto Earthquake. While previous special issues by the JDR have focused on specific disasters, this special issue will focus on the lessons and findings from the catastrophe and will cover even the progress of disaster research since then. We received fourteen important and thought-provoking manuscripts not only on scientific and engineering aspects but also on social and cultural aspects, including comparisons with other disasters, historical views, reconstruction issues, and future perspectives. These fourteen articles can be categorized into the three groups described below.
The first four articles are the English translations of articles that originally appeared in “Koho Bosai,” the bimonthly journal on natural disaster reduction that is complied and published by the Disaster Management Section, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan. The JDR believes that these four articles provide a concise English description of various aspects of the Great Kanto Earthquake disasters. Dr. Takemura summarizes the seismic features of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Sekizawa summarizes the large scale urban fires that it caused. Dr. Suzuki describes various aspects of the emergency responses. Dr. Murosaki details the recovery project in Tokyo. Those articles discussed various lessons learned from the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and emphasized the importance of transferring the lessons toward future disaster mitigation.
The next six papers were originally works studying various aspects of the Great Kanto Earthquake disasters. Dr. Midorikawa reviews the strong ground motion of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Kaneko evaluates the resulting tsunami. Mr. Mammen sheds new light on the relationship between Charles A. Beard and Goto Shinpei in terms of the recovery. Dr. Albini studies the voices of foreign residents who left impressive disaster processes at that time. Dr. Murao reviews the urbanization of Tokyo after the Kanto Earthquake. Dr. Shima studies the response of the Tokyo Electric Light Company, Inc. to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake.
The last four papers are works on various aspects of disaster risk reduction, but all of these works were inspired by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in one way or another. Dr. Shaw provides a framework for repositioning earthquake risk reduction. Dr. Shimbo explores the Phase Free Concept. Dr. Shoji focuses on the possibility of Medium-Wave AM Radio Broadcasting. Dr. Yamaguchi studies the Risk Communication Method.
The Editorial Board of the JDR thanks all of these contributors and hopes that these articles serve as great sources for further research in disaster risk reduction.
At 9:26 pm on April 14, 2016, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck directly beneath Kumamoto prefecture, Japan, producing a seismic intensity level (JMA) of 7 in Mashiki Town. Although the earthquake ...damage forecasting system in operation at the time predicted that this earthquake would cause no damage, it resulted in extensive human casualties and property damage centered in Mashiki Town. Past midnight on April 16, 28 hours after the first shock, the second and main shock hit, which recorded magnitude 7.3 and was the strongest recorded urban earthquake in Japan since 1995. The hypocenter extended from Kumamoto prefecture to Oita prefecture, cutting across the island of Kyushu. Mount Aso also saw increased volcanic activities which led to several landslides. This resulted in the collapse of the Great Aso Bridge, an important transportation point, causing the loss of human lives as well as obstruction of traffic for an extended period. Much confusion arose in the process of implementing measures in response to the earthquakes, which produced damage in urban areas as well as hilly and mountainous regions, raising many issues and prompting several new approaches. Researchers in many fields have conducted various activities at the disaster sites in the one-year period following the earthquakes, and produced significant findings in many areas. In order to make these results available to the wider global community, JDR is releasing a special issue on the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes with excellent papers and reports to mark their one-year anniversary. While the submitted papers to this special issue went through our regular peer review process, no publication charge was imposed so as to encourage as many submissions as possible.
It is our hope that this special issue will contribute to throwing light on the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes in its entirety.
We are very pleased to publish this special issue, dedicated to NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2022. There are four papers, two reviews, ...and one note in this issue.
In the last year of the NIED’s fourth mid/long term plan period, which began in 2016, natural disasters have occurred every year, including earthquake disasters such as the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake (M7.3) and the 2018 Iburi, Hokkaido earthquake (M7.1). Rainfall disasters include the heavy rainfall in northern Kyushu in July 2017, southwestern Japan in July 2018, northern Kyushu in August 2019, Kanto and Tohoku in October 2019, and Kyushu in July 2020. In the summer of 2022, the heavy rainfall and extreme weather continued over Japan.
The first three papers and one note contain hazard and risk information. Dohi et al. present the development of Japan Tsunami Hazard Information Station (J-THIS), Cui et al. present a study of the estimation of damage based on analysis of SNS Information, Nakamura provides avalanche risk information, and Ise et al. note information linkage by the Shared Information Platform for Disaster Management (SIP4D). Horiuchi et al. review the contribution of the E-Defence shaking table. This special issue also includes two social science works. Nagata et al. present tsunami disaster risk reduction education programs, and Yamazaki-Honda reviews promoting coherence among disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development for disaster resilience.
In the first half of the 21st century, a mega disaster such as the Nankai Trough earthquake is expected to occur. Extreme climatic events are also becoming more frequent: typhoons, floods, heavy rains and snows, landslides, and heat waves. We hope this issue provides information useful to all readers who study natural disasters.
We are very pleased to publish this Mini Special Issue, dedicated to NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2021. Three papers and one survey ...report are included.
Miura et al. indicate the scope of disaster prevention covered by the new courses of study in the field of disaster prevention. By visualizing the contents of classification and analysis, they propose how to handle the scope of disaster prevention in disaster prevention learning in consideration of the comprehensiveness to solve the problems. In the second paper, a case study on flood damage in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture, Mizui and Fujiwara analyze a method of immediately determining the amount of waste disposal work and the number of residents and disaster volunteers required in the event of a disaster. Fujiwara et al. study the feasibility of estimating damage to large-spanned building structures by conducting shake table tests on a small gymnasium model with simulated damage and measuring the natural frequencies and mode shapes. Onoue et al., in a work published as a survey report, present a method for analyzing slope displacement by using the distance image data of a depth camera. They indicate the possibility of detecting minute changes that can precede slope failure.
We hope this issue provides information useful to all readers who study natural disasters.
A holistic and comprehensive perspective on society is essential to disaster research. However, at one time, the world did not have any scholarly journals that dealt with disasters from a holistic ...point of view. This situation gave rise to the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), the first issue of which was published in August 2006. In principle, six issues are published annually, with special or extra issues also published in some years.
The Great East Japan Earthquake struck in March 2011, five years after the first issue of the JDR. Following this incident, we decided to publish a special issue whenever there was a major disaster. All accepted papers and articles were to be published free of charge, in electronic format. So far, eight special issues have been published.
Since this year 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of that disaster, we at the JDR have decided to publish a special issue of notes on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster. The selected theme is “Thoughts About the Great Disaster Now That Ten Years Have Passed.” As an academic journal dealing comprehensively with disasters and disaster risk reduction, we asked people working in all disaster-related fields to submit, from their unique perspectives, their views or proposals in any area or subject regarding what changes have taken place, what has remained the same, or what is needed in the future.
We have the twelve notes presented here in this Special Issue on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Part VI. We hope that these notes provide seeds for further progress in the field of disaster research.
Lastly, the editors would like to thank all contributors who submitted their manuscripts and the reviewers who provided valuable feedback with their constructive comments.
Three years have passed since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China. The pandemic rapidly spread worldwide, especially through Europe and the Americas.
The
Journal of ...Disaster Research
(JDR) edited its “Special Issue on COVID-19 and Historical Pandemics, Part 1 and Part 2” at the end of 2020 and 2021, and their electronic versions were published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117) and January 2022 (JDR Vol.17, No.1, pp. 1-158), respectively.
However, the pandemic is still continued and not yet eradicated. The cumulative number of cases of COVID-19 worldwide, as released in the World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Update was 260 million as of December 2021. We therefore planned for the publication of this Special Issue Part 3 and called for papers.
This Special Issue Part 3 includes nine manuscripts, which deal from various fields related to COVID-19, such as including vaccine rollout program, the role of social media, problems in school education, therapeutic agents, virology, and general epidemiology. This suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic is a complicated disaster.
In December 2022, the global number of cumulative cases have increased to 940 million, almost one-tenth of the world’s population, although this number includes many asymptomatic infections. On the contrary, the number of new COVID-19 cases has slowed of mildness in the American and European countries in the year 2022, yet there has been a conspicuous increase in newly reported cases in Asia, especially in the Republic of Korea and Japan. Although the cases from African countries have still continued to report fewer numbers of cases than the number from other areas, However, there is still some possibility of that this is because of a lower number of medicinal tests, such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, are given in African countries. If this is the reason, future increases of the medicinal tests in Africa may cause result in undesirable increases of in the number of cases therein African counties.
We are hopeful that the COVID-19 pandemic will be eradicated in the next year, consequently no necessary for the rendering a Special Issue Part 4.
We are very pleased to publish the Special Issue on NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2020. There are nine papers in this issue.
The first ...two papers concern hazard and risk information systems: Sano et al. constructed a real-time risk information map for flood and landslide disasters, and Hirashima et al. created an alert system for snow removal from rooftops. These systems are already in use on the NIED website. The next three papers are case studies of recent storm disasters in Japan and the United States: Cui et al. analyzed the time variation in the distribution of damage reports in the headquarters for heavy-rainfall disaster control in Fukuoka, Shakti et al. studied flood disasters caused by Typhoon Hagibis (2019), and Iizuka and Sakai conducted a meteorological analysis of Hurricane Harvey (2017). Regarding volcanic disasters, Tanada and Nakamura reported the results of an electromagnetic survey of Mt. Nasudake.
This special issue also includes three papers on large-scale model experimentation: Danjo and Ishizawa studied the rainfall infiltration process using NIED’s Large-Scale Rainfall Simulator, Kawamata and Nakazawa conducted experiments concerning liquefaction, and Nakazawa et al. reported the results of experiments on seismic retrofits for road embankments. The experiments used E-Defense, the world’s largest three-dimensional shaking table.
We hope this issue will provide useful information for all readers studying natural disasters.
This special issue focuses on “Build Back Better,” which is the key concept of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction provides ...United Nations member states and economies concrete actions to protect their economic development achievements from disaster risk. However, how “Build Back Better” can be measured and linked to disaster risk reduction remain unclear.
Three papers here analyze the results of the “Life Recovery Survey Five Years After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake,” which was conducted in June of 2016. The first Life Recovery Survey was conducted four years after the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake to document the extent to which the disaster victims had been able to rebuild their lives. Subsequently, the survey was conducted every two years until ten years after the earthquake. The survey was also conducted in the areas affected by the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake and the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake. Five years after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the present authors conducted a survey to document the actual situation of the disaster victims in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima prefectures, which were the hardest hit by the disaster.
In addition, we analyzed the history of Nankai Trough earthquakes with the goal of preparing for the next Nankai Trough earthquake, which is predicted to occur in the near future. These results make it possible to identify issues and make recommendations on the kinds of systems that should be implemented.
It is our hope that this special issue will provide basic data to elucidate these issues.
COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, 2 years ago, became a pandemic, that continues to this day.
The Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) edited a special issue, “Special Issue on COVID-19 and ...Historical Pandemics” at the end of 2020 and an electronic version of the issue was published in January 2021 (JDR Vol.16, No.1, pp. 1-117).
Even though one year has passed, life has not yet returned to normal due to the continued spread of COVID-19. Although the percentage of the general public that has been vaccinated continues to increase and various drugs and treatments have been developed, the number of COVID-19 cases also continues to increase. A huge number of COVID-19 cases have been reported, especially in Europe and the Americas.
Accordingly, we planned to publish Special Issue Part 2 and called for papers.
This Special Issue Part 2 includes 18 manuscripts, which deal with general epidemiology, effects on socioeconomic or educational areas, and clinical medicine, including vaccines and medical treatments.
The virus spike protein plays an important role in its intrusion into human cells and the onset of COVID-19 infection. Although SARS-CoV-2 (the pathogenic virus of COVID-19) originated in Wuhan, China, various variant strains with mutation in gene coding in the spike protein have appeared in multiple countries. The WHO classifies these variants into the categories of VOC (variant of concern), VOI (variant of interest), or VUM (variant under monitoring).
The definitions of VOC and VOI are as follows. VOC: “A SARS-CoV-2 variant that meets the definition of a VOI and, through a comparative assessment, has been demonstrated to be associated with one or more changes in the degree of global public health significance.” VOI: “Increase in transmissibility or detrimental change in COVID-19 epidemiology, increase in virulence or change in clinical disease presentation, or decrease in effectiveness of public health and social measures or available diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.”
The WHO uses Greek letters designating the variants. Accordingly as they have appeared, variants have been designated as alpha (α: the UK variant), beta (β: the South Africa variant), and delta (δ: the Indian variant).
After the deadline for the manuscript of this special issue, a new variant, omicron (
o
) originated in South Africa and Botswana, and it immediately began spreading worldwide. Unfortunately, it was impossible to include the manuscript on the omicron variant in this Special Issue Part 2, as the deadline had already passed.
As COVID-19 continues to spread, the JDR will plan to edit Part 3 of this COVID-19 special issue.
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