scholarly journals Preface to the Special Issue on the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 4_1-4_1
Author(s):  
Kazuhiko Kawashima
Keyword(s):  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Special Issue

scholarly journals Preface to the Special Issue on ^|^ldquo;What We Can Do for the Great East Japan Earthquake from Now on^|^rdquo;

Materia Japan ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-138
Author(s):  
Shoichi Hirosawa ◽  
Satoshi Hata ◽  
Seiichiro Ii ◽  
Shingo Tanaka ◽  
Haruo Nakamichi
Keyword(s):  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Special Issue

Special Issue on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Part IV

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (sp) ◽  
pp. 709-709
Author(s):  
Katsuki Takiguchi
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Earthquake Disaster ◽  
Kanto Earthquake ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many

The basic policy of the Journal of Disaster Research (JDR), as a multidisciplinary academicjournal, is to cover all types of disasters ? except for war ? through a broad comprehensive perspective. Since its inaugural issue in August 2006, the JDR has been published bimonthly,with six issues a year. 2015 marks the tenth year since the JDRfs first issue. Among the many events happening during this decade is the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster which was induced by the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake.This event had two major features ? that the tsunami accompanying the earthquake caused the main damage and that it triggered a nuclear hazard accident at a nuclear power plant. The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster was a unprecedented earthquake disaster called catastrophic hazard following two others ? the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake Disasterthat leveled Tokyo and the 1995 Hanshin Awaji Earthquake Disaster that destroyed parts of Osaka and Kobe. In view of this catastrophic hazardfs scale, the JDR decided to publish special annual issues on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster for five years since 2012 in addition to its regularissues. No publication fee was charged to contributors and support was asked from corporations. Papers on the special issues are published mainly online as an e-journal though printed editions are published for archival purposes. The current issue is the fourth of these special issues, and contributors have covered the 2011 disaster from many a wide range of perspectives. 21 papers were submitted and 8 papers are accepted for publication after peer review. The editors are confident that, like the previous three issues, this issue fully measure up to the quality that was expected for the special issue. I wish to express my gratitude to the contributors and reviewers and to thank corporations for their invaluable support.

Special Issue on Real World Robot Challenge in Tsukuba – Technology for the Coexistence with Human Beings –

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoshihiro Takita ◽  
Shin’ichi Yuta ◽  
Takashi Tsubouchi ◽  
Koichi Ozaki
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Grand Challenge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Mobile Environment ◽  
Human Operators

Robotics researchers appear to have shifted their focus since the Great East Japan Earthquake. Despite a large-scale national R&D project on Advanced Robots for Hazardous Environments for 8 years from 1983, the technology has not been put to use effectively following the Great Hanshin Earthquake and researchers are starting to look more closely at applications enabling robots to replace human beings, e.g., by rescuing victims of earthquake and flood disasters. A good example is Quince and the remote-controlled heavy equipment used to handle the pyroclastic flow at Unzen volcano in 1991 and then mobilized at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Robotics researchers of the past only used to describe their dream proposals when asked what robots could accomplish. Since the 2011 disaster event, however, it has become clear that the issues we should be looking at are those of developing robots that are practical and useful. If we are asked what role the real-world competition Tsukuba Challenge plays in this context, would first recommend that those who hope to take part visit the actual site and see for themselves what they must do to field a winning robot. The Tsukuba Challenge site includes public thoroughfares traversed by pedestrians and cyclists. Although there are no cars or motorcycles on these paths, almost anything can happen. From hot summer until cooler fall when the official run is held daily temperature, rain, wind and typhoons, and trees – all of which must be detected for navigation – undergo many changes. These changes require that robots navigate accurately in this real-world environment. In general, robotics research papers are accepted for publication if robots can navigate as planned in a restricted and fixed mobile environment even if they can do so only once. In the Tsukuba Challenge, however, many things can go wrong and robot maneuvers can become unstable or even nonmobile, regardless of successful navigation in laboratory settings. There is no space here to discuss all possible factors, but the established navigation method by one paper is not always successful and responsible in the actual Tsukuba Challenge environment. Robots historically came to be as devices operated by human beings, but those taking part in the Challenge must be controlled by computers instead of human operators. This means that it must be confirmed that robots can operate as required in experiments meeting various conditions. Teams may conduct ten or so trial runs a year on the actual route so that their systems can be adequately adjusted and modified. The total process that competing in the Tsukuba Challenge requires also has an educational effect in grooming new talent in robotics. The Challenge differs from the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge, held from 2004 to 2007, in the size – robots must not be too big and must not appear threatening – and the need to take the presence of human beings into consideration. Although the task from 2007 to 2012 had been only to navigate a preset route and reach a final goal, still the percentage of successful runs has declined. From 2013 on, another task has been added – that of locating specific persons (search targets) within given areas – to encourage the use of advanced technology in realizing useful robots. Those interested may see the results on the Tsukuba Challenge website as follow: http://www.tsukubachallenge.jp/tc2013. The selection of articles for this special issue emphasized the following criteria: 1) For robots successfully completing required tasks, describing and discussing the superiority of the control technology and results. 2) For unsuccessful robots, clearly analyzing how the actual run differed from researchers’ expectations and pinpointing the underlying causes of failure. The submitted papers describe technologies that have enabled robots to navigate in spaces shared with human beings, and we hope that a study of these papers will spur readers to accelerate advances in autonomous mobile robots.

Special Issue on the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster: Part V

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (sp) ◽  
pp. 769-769
Author(s):  
Katsuki Takiguchi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Great East Japan Earthquake ◽  
Radioactive Material ◽  
Disaster Prevention ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Academic Journal ◽  
The 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Urban Safety

Journal of Disaster Research (JDR) published its first issue in August, 2006. Since then, we have published six issues a year on a bimonthly basis. JDR is an academic journal aimed at bringing a broad, comprehensive discussion to the subject of disasters, and thus contributing to the field of disaster prevention and reduction. Its comprehensive coverage harbors the risk of becoming unfocussed or fostering unsubstantiated conclusions. At JDR, we have dealt with this risk by making most issues special feature issues, and inviting specialists in the relevant fields as guest editors. The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March, 2011, five years after our first issue was published. It was a Mw9.0 earthquake that occurred off the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region. The earthquake triggered a tsunami which produced huge casualties, amounting to over 18,000 dead or missing persons. The disaster was accompanied by a nuclear plant accident, an unprecedented event in mankind’s history. The catastrophic accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Company, resulted in core meltdown and the release of radioactive material. At JDR, we considered it our responsibility to publish, apart from our regular issues, special issues on the Great East Japan Earthquake consisting of five yearly issues beginning with the first issue in 2012. This issue, Part 5, is the final issue. We would like to thank all of the authors who submitted articles for the five special issues, the reviewers, and many others who contributed. The special issues project on the Great East Japan Earthquake will be passed down to a special issue on the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes occurred on April, 2016 in Kumamoto, Japan. Co-Editors: Suminao Murakami (Editor-in-Chief; Representative, Laboratory of Urban Safety Planning, Japan) Haruo Hayashi (Editor-in-Chief; President, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, Japan) Hideaki Karaki (President, Foundation of Food Safety and Security, Japan)

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