Messages from Departments and Centers of NILIM
Greater Achievement in Studies of Disaster Prevention / Maintenance /Environment by Strengthening the Incorporation of Vertical andHorizontal Structures
FUJITA Koichi (D.Eng.)
Executive Director for Research Affairs
Keywords: cross-sectional approach, bird's-eye view of whole picture, count back from a goal, national land system

NILIM studies connect with the field for real
management and cover a wide range ofinfrastructure
The NILIM is "vertically structured" in that eachresearch department directly supports technologicalpolicy for a different kind of infrastructure or area (e.g.,
sewerage, rivers, roads, buildings, housing, urban areas,coastal and marine areas, ports and harbors, or airports). It
is also "horizontally structured" in that each research
center addresses cross-sectional issues that fall under theheadings of management and informatization. Uniquely,
the NILIM maintains good communication withengineers who are implementing technological policy inthe field, while also researching a broad scope of highly
specialized issues in land and infrastructure management(Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Bird's-Eye View of National Land System --Research projects of NILIM cover about 70% of theitems above.

Reasons for increasing importance ofincorporation between vertical and horizontal
structures
As Fig. 1 shows, the national land system consists ofvarious fields, factors, and systems. For example, eachtype of social infrastructure is greatly different fromothers, much in the way that giraffes, hippos, and lions
are different. They are so different that we might beperplexed to think whether they need to be handled by across-sectional approach. However, just as giraffes,
hippos, and lions share a common ecosystem, variouskinds of infrastructure have common characteristics andare connected with each other—constituting a nationalland system.
There are considerable differences in the current
approaches to maintain different kinds of infrastructuresuch as sewerage systems, river hydraulic structures, androads, which is becoming an important issue. However, acomparison of commonalities among types ofinfrastructure reveals that there are approaches that canand should be mutually adopted in order to appropriately
maintain our infrastructure.
Furthermore, in continuing to promote technology
policy for land and infrastructure management, it isnecessary to overcome various issues under ever morechallenging conditions, such as excessive external forces
and climate change, rapidly aging infrastructure, andcomplicated matters that must be coordinated when
implementing environmental conservation / restoration
projects. Under such circumstances, while upgrading theskills on each kind of infrastructure -- "giraffe," "hippo,"and "lion," it is necessary to pay attention to other matters,
look at them as groups, and then work out well-conceived
visions and measures.
In 2014, the NILIM will further strengthen theframework for incorporating its vertical and horizontalstructures, both in terms of organization andadministration. As reflected in the title of this paper, theprimary targets of such efforts are disaster prevention(disaster reduction and crisis management), maintenance(maintenance of social infrastructure), and theenvironment (conservation and restoration).
Points for leading horizontal function toachieve
It is not so easy to crosslink each research field.
Sometimes, the connection itself mistakenly becomes theobjective. For a horizontal structure to really demonstrate
a true effect, the following three points are essential.
(1) To assemble a complete picture of the issues, identify
targets, study approaches, and maintain perspective.
The complete picture should be founded on anunderlying basic principle that is in turn based on anunderstanding of real situations; no effort should beorganized abstractly or superficially. Figure 2 attempts toshow the overall composition of social infrastructure
maintenance from a viewpoint of "what should we workout." If any of the requirements, flows or cycles shown inthis figure is unsatisfied or inactive, an issue will occur
with maintenance.
As known from this figure, there are various points
where an issue could occur, e.g., technology development
processes, interfaces between needs and seeds when
applying such technology, the acquisition of technicalknowledge that constitutes the core of maintenance, andthe dissemination and practice of maintenanceengineering which necessarily includes building
institutional systems and securing human resource. In
each of these cases, the responsive measures will bedifferent. Looking at the situation as a whole, it isnecessary to make constant efforts to clarify what issues aproject aims to address. With such approach, it should
become easy to identify the matters for which ahorizontal structure is particularly useful, mattersaccumulated in past studies, results of approaches in otherfields, etc. Hence, a "next-best approach" can reasonably
be chosen.

approach that takes in all possible measures, combinesthem organically and make the best use of them, without
taking the approach of merely bundling the existing
results (i.e., what we know we can do) accumulated inindividual technical fields. Working backward from thegoal in Fig. 3 will upgrade the policy on individual
studies and automatically help provide perspective acrossindividual studies.

Figure 3: Relationship between Study ofDisaster Prevention and Mitigation Basedon an Understanding of Responses of theNational Land System to Events andImplementation of Countermeasures (Inreference to discussions made by the crisis
management workshop, which is an internalcross-functional approach.)

Figure 2: Attempt to Map the Conditions forContinuous Good Quality Maintenance of Social
Infrastructure (In reference to discussions made by thestock management workshop, which is an internalcross-functional approach.)(2) Activities should be arranged by counting back fromthe goal.
Figure 3 shows a composition (the upper half of afigure) wherein an event (external force) acts on thenational land system shown in Fig. 1 and causes adisaster that impacts people and society. The lower halfof the figure shows a situation wherein various technicalmeasures are developed and arranged in awell-coordinated way based on an understanding of theresponse of the national land system. These measurescontribute to preventing or mitigating damage.
To address a serious disaster, such as a Nankai TroughEarthquake or earthquake directly under Metropolitan
Tokyo, which is expected to be broad and complex, it isparticularly important to establish specific objectives thatwill minimize the damage in target areas, and choose an

Vertical and horizontal structures working
hard together
This is the third point. As a major premise forhorizontal structures to achieve results, vertical structures,that is to say, technologies in each field should be firmly
established on the ground. It is difficult to accuratelyassemble an overall approach and also advance eachtechnical field. Yet, we have to do just that. We must face
this mission straightforwardly and work hard together sothat the two structures will strengthen each other. I would
like to believe that an approach with such a goal will leadto greater achievement in studies of "technology policy
for land and infrastructure management."