SENDAI -Towards a Disaster-Resilient and Environmentally-Friendly City

The IRIDeS conducts world-leading research on natural disaster science and disaster mitigation. Its mission is to use the experiences of and lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake to contribute to international disaster prevention, disaster risk reduction and early recovery, through studying and researching the mechanisms that cause large-scale earthquakes and tsunami, and associated disaster risks.

I saw the damage done by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami with my own eyes while I was studying at Chulalongkorn University. It showed me the importance and necessity of countermeasures against tsunami and other disasters in Thailand, and led me to start research on tsunami hazard and risk assessment at Tohoku University’s Tsunami Engineering Laboratory in 2007. Our laboratory is the only one in the world that is adopting an engineering-based approach to tsunami research. We are working to make the tsunami hazard and disaster risk evaluations that have resulted from our research available globally, and to develop a practical tsunami risk reduction mobile app.

We are also focusing on disaster risk reduction education, and try to give disaster risk reduction lessons to children around the world. One of the greatest results of our work is that teachers in Thailand have begun to create disaster risk reduction books and materials for children. These are based on Sendai’s supplementary reading material for DRR education, “From 3.11 to the Future,” which I introduced to the Thai Ministry of Education. We want to show children all across the world the importance of disaster prevention and disaster risk reduction, so they can build a brighter future.

The World Bosai Forum/IDRC 2017 in Sendai will be held continuously in Sendai from November next year. I hope that we will be able to share our work on disaster prevention and disaster risk reduction based on our experiences and lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake here in Sendai, and that we can also show you the results of our research at IRIDeS.