We hope to contribute to the creation of a safe and secure society by developing a systematic framework and methodology for earthquake and tsunami risk assessment, which will enable more reliable estimation, and provide basic information for disaster mitigation planning in coastal areas. In particular, the field associated with tsunami risks has been an untapped field, and the results of this research are being sought both domestically and internationally. In the future, we would like to conduct risk assessments both in Japan and overseas, provide systematic support for preventive disaster prevention and disaster mitigation, and build a system of disaster mitigation that transforms risk.

We experienced the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which had a major impact on more than 10 countries in Asia and Africa, and the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami, which caused serious damage even in Japan, which has the highest tsunami protection level in the world. Based on these experiences, we believe that there is a strong need for comprehensive earthquake and tsunami risk assessment research. Therefore, we will evaluate human and building risks caused by local and distant earthquakes and tsunamis by using historical data, numerical analysis models, and field surveys, in cooperation with domestic and international research networks. We hope to provide the results to society and propose more disaster-resistant urban development.

Ecosystems provide us the fundamental resource for life (e.g. freshwater, food, and energy), therapeutic value, and disaster risk reduction. Indeed, the coastal forest in Sendai plain saved structures from Tsunamis in 2011. To receive these ecological services, the ecosystem potentially needs to have resilience towards natural/artificial disturbance. There are several possible keys of the resilience of ecosystems such as biodiversity and ecological network. However, due to technical limitations, it has been difficult to survey the diversity of various biota and ecosystems on a long-term basis and difficult to demonstrate. Hence, my research aims to establish a method for monitoring and assessing biodiversity in ecosystems from rivers to coastal areas, using “environmental DNA (eDNA)” which is the rapidly developing technique for biological surveys. I would like to contribute to creating a sustainable society by clarifying the factors that are important for ensuring ecological resilience.

We live in Japan, which is a disaster-stricken archipelago region, and have a long history of protecting our daily lives from earthquakes and tsunamis, windstorms, and floods, by coping with the harsh natural environment. In the IRIDeS, the Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster Risk Research Division is conducting daily research on how to mitigate disasters through risk assessment. In particular, we are conducting outreach classes for children to pass on knowledge and lessons learnt from the earthquakes to the next generation, and to improve their ability to respond and make decisions in times of disaster by disseminating knowledge about disaster prevention and mitigation. We are also promoting the digitization of teaching materials and are working on online disaster prevention education.