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ICUS/INCEDE NEWSLETTER
International Center for Urban Safety Engineering

Institute of Industrial Science
The University of Tokyo

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

VOLUME 1 NUMBER 3
OCTOBER -DECEMBER 2001

Earthquake Safety of Existing Dams
for Irrigation and Water Supply in Rural Areas
By
Dr. Martin Wieland*
Up to now no incidents havebeen reported in the literature,
where people have been killed dueto the failure of a well-engineered
dam during an earthquake. This isvery encouraging, indeed. However, this favourable performanceof dams does not necessarily meanthat dams are inherently safe

against earthquakes. For example,
during the Bhuj earthquake of January 26, 2001 in Gujarat Province inIndia, about 200 earth dams weredamaged and need repair and/or
strengthening. Because the reservoir
levels were extremely low during thetime of the earthquake, no catastrophic release of water took placefrom the reservoirs of the severely
damaged dams.
Despite the fact that these earth
dams with a height of less than 30m, which are often built by local
communities, are different from thewell-engineered dams forhydropower projects, we have to

Cracks along the crest and vertical settlement of the Suvi dam damaged
during the January 26, 2001 Bhuj earthquake (Mw 7.7) in Gujarat, India (courtesy: JSCE, Japan)

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 3

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recognize that plenty of similardams exist all over the world. The
water stored behind these earth
dams is mainly for irrigation andwater supply.
Moreover, there are very few
large dams, which have been exposed to ground motions that may
be expected during the maximum
credible earthquake (MCE), an
event which a dam must be able toresist successfully according to thecurrent International Commission
on Large Dams (ICOLD) guidelines prepared by the Committee on
Seismic Aspects of Dam Design(CSADD), which is chaired by theauthor of this paper.
The Bhuj earthquake has also
shown that in countries with inadequate earthquake preparedness,strong earthquakes can cause large
number of casualties and huge economic losses. The problem is thelargely unknown and often insufficient earthquake safety of the existing buildings and infrastructure
projects as earthquake actions may
not have been taken into accountproperly in the design. Earthquake
regulations exist in most countries.
If they are followed properly, they
apply to new structures only andthe earthquake safety of the manyold structures is essentially ignored.
Unfortunately, the same applies tothe existing irrigation dams in mostparts of the world. Although it may
be known that these relatively small
dams do not comply with today's
rigorous design criteria, the owners and dam safety authorities arestill reluctant to look into the safetyof these dams as long as no catastrophic incident has occurred.
In the subsequent part, the reasons and justification for a programof earthquake safety evaluation andseismic upgrading of existing irrigation dams are given, which wehope, will encourage the dam owners and dam safety agencies to address this issue.
If we ignore the call for in-creased safety of the existing infrastructure projects with large damage
potential - dams belong to this category of projects - the many groups,
who are already opposing new dams,
will use the earthquake safety as oneof their arguments. This is alreadytrue for quite a number of large dam
projects.

ronmental damages exceeding billions of US$. Earthquakes may
cause failure of dams, with inherent weaknesses. These weaknesses are often not known. But thestatistics on dam incidents showthat quite a number of deficientdams fail during the first few years
after construction.

Background
The majority of the older dams
were built using methods of seismic
analysis and seismic design criteria,
which, today, are considered as obsolete or outdated. Therefore, inmany cases, it is not known if an old
dam complies with the current seismic safety guidelines published by
ICOLD (1989). Therefore, at theAnnual ICOLD Meeting in Antalya,
Turkey in September 1999, CSADD
was given the task to address theissue of the earthquake safety of existing dams. This is also one of thesubjects, which will be discussed during the forthcoming ICOLD Congress in Montreal, Canada in 2003.

During the last decades, significant progress in the assessment of
the seismic hazard at a dam site andthe dynamic analysis of dams has
been achieved. The trend goes towards higher intensities of theearthquake ground motion at damsites, which is usually characterized
by the peak ground acceleration(PGA). To illustrate this problem:
most dams were designed against
earthquakes using a so-called
pseudo-static approach and a PGA
of 0.1 g (g: acceleration due to gravity). An MCE with a magnitude oflarger than 6 can generate (locally)a PGA of more than 0.5 g, i.e. avalue, which is five times larger thanthe design value. Because of thislarge discrepancy between the design acceleration and the PGA values to be expected during the MCE,
it is often not possible to make areliable statement about the earthquake safety of an existing dam.

According to the current ICOLD
guidelines, large dams have to beable to withstand the effects of theso-called MCE. This is the strongest ground motion that could occur
at a dam site. In practice, the MCE
is considered to have a return periodof several thousand years (typically
10,000 years in countries of moderate to low seismicity).
Because of the very long return
period of destructive earthquakes inmany parts of the world and because
relatively few dams have been severely damaged by strong earthquakes, it is rather difficult to convince the dam owners and decision
makers of the benefits of a seismic
reassessment and upgrading of deficient dams.

The main conclusion that can bemade is that the earthquake safetyof most existing dams is unknown
and some may even be unsafe. If adam should turn to be unsafe, thenthe easiest way to comply withsafety standards would be to lower
the reservoir level or decommission
a dam. Because there are very few
viable alternatives to dams in many
developing countries, decommissioning of dams or lowering thereservoir level would be the last resort.

Risk analyses, carried out for several dams in industrialized countries,
have shown that the failure of a large
dam and the resulting flood wave
may cause a large number of casualties and huge economic and envi-

Based on our experience with theseismic safety evaluation of damsin countries of high and moderate
seismicity like Iran and Switzerland
respectively, we can state that welldesigned dams will also satisfy to-

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day's seismic safety criteria. We
feel that it would be appropriate toaddress this important subject andtake adequate action as structuralsafety stands in the first place ofany dam project, i.e. way ahead of
economic, environmental, ecological and socio-political concerns.
This fact may have been overlookedin the recent debate on benefits andconcerns of dams.
It is also in the interest of the dam
community to have a clean record, Shi-Kang water supply weir damaged during the Chi-Chi earthquake(Mw 7.5) of September 21, 1999 in Taiwan (courtesy: K. Meguro)
as the failure of a single large dam
may increase opposition against any Reduction, in which earthquake haz- means to raise awareness in thisard played an important role. Earth- problem and a first step towards a
new dam projects worldwide.
quake safety of a dam is a must, as comprehensive program for the
Proposed plan for action
it seems that strong earthquakes can- seismic upgrading of existing dams.
Investments in the seismic safety not be predicted in the near future. Such a program has, for example,of dams generally receive low pri- By means of water alarm systems already been implemented sucority as there is no visible immedi- for critical dams, a large number of cessfully in California in the 1990s.
ate return on the investment. This people could be saved from a flood During these seminars, the optihas been a problem with all projects wave but economic and environmen- mum methods for the reduction ofrelated to natural disasters with a tal losses cannot be avoided in the the seismic risk posed by deficientvery low probability of occurrence. case of a dam breach.
dams could be discussed as well.
These investments into the future do seldom reap benefits for
those, who have taken the decisions, as the horizon of politicians
may be a few years and that ofmanagers is often even much
shorter. A long-term view in suchprograms is a prerequisite for sustainable safety improvements of theexisting dams.
As there is a steadily increasing
demand for water, flood protection
and clean energy, safe operationand dam safety are prerequisites.
Unfortunately, seismic safety ofdams (and other infrastructure
projects) has been an area, which
has been neglected despite the factthat the decade 1990 to 2000 was
declared by the UN as the International Decade for Natural Disaster

From Editor's Desk
Half a year has past since thestarting of ICUS/INCEDE. With thetime, the center is expanding its activities to cover broad aspects of urban safety engineering. We arepleased to see that our network is
expanding as well, which gives us a

The main benefits of a seismic
safety evaluation program for large
dams are as follows:i) Compliance with current safety
requirements: all parties responsible for the safety of a dam canbe ensured about its safety during
very strong earthquakes (legal protection of owners against claimsof negligence).
ii) Socio-economic and political acceptance of dam: the safety of thepeople living in the downstream
area of the dam and their property can be guaranteed.
iii) Sustainable economic benefits: thedam and the reservoir can be used
as initially planned.
Awareness is the first step towards improved earthquake safety.
Seminars would be a cost-effective
broad platform to share our views andoutcomes with the members around theworld. In this newsletter, we include
the articles on our expanded activities regularly along with the researchoutcomes. We welcome the articles on
various activities of network members
on urban safety in this newsletter so

As the first step, this issue shallbe put on the agenda of dam safety
agencies and dam owners. Next,
seismic re-evaluations of the older
dams, especially those located inseismically active regions shall be
performed and finally measures
shall be taken to improve the safetyof any deficient dams.
Finally, we have to realize that
we have not yet solved all seismic
problems completely. Every time
there is another strong earthquake,
we have to improve the earthquake
standards and guidelines.
* Chairman, Committee on
Seismic Aspects of Dam Design,
ICOLD, Tel: (+41-76) 356 28 62;
E-mail: martin.wieland@ewe.ch
and ICUS Network Memberthat other members can share yourviews. Please feel free to send us yourarticles on your activities, yourachievements anytime by e-mail or
mail. We shall put effort to include
it in newsletter in time. Let us share
our activities among our network
members for our common goal.

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Analyzing "Heat Island" from Space
By
Yoshifumi Yasuoka
Prof. Yoshifumi Yasuoka, a professor at the Division of Information Dynamics of ICUS/INCEDE, has theresarch specialization in the field of remote sensing. As a part of the research of his team, a MODIS
receiving station was installed at IIS last year. In this article, Prof. Yasuoka introduces the expanded
research activities of his team on heat island phenomenon using data from MODIS receiving station.

In December 18, 1999, NASAlaunched the Terra satellite, whichis the first Earth Observing System(EOS) platform and provides global data on the state of the atmosphere, land, and oceans, as well as
their interactions with solar radiation and with one another. MODIS(Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer) is a key instrument aboard the Terra (EOS AM)
and Aqua (EOS PM) satellites.
Terra's orbit around the Earth istimed so that it passes from northto south across the equator in themorning, while Aqua passes south
to north over the equator in the afternoon. Terra MODIS and Aqua
MODIS are viewing the entire
Earth's surface every 1 to 2 days,
acquiring data in 36 spectral bands,
or groups of wavelengths.
To monitor the environment anddisaster parameters around the East
Asia as a part of our research, two
MODIS receiving stations were installed by our research team, one
at the Institute of Industrial Science(IIS) of the University of Tokyo andanother at the Asian Institute ofTechnology (AIT), Thailand, fromThe Tape Archiving System for Satellite Data at IIS
which we started receiving data (ACRoRS), AIT one identicalsince May, 2001. In addition to our MODIS receiving facility. That staexisting satellite receiving systems of tion is managed by the Joint ManNOAA HRPT and GMS S-VISSR, agement Committee composing ofa new X-band satellite reception fa- ACRoRS, Geo-Informatics andcility was installed in IIS, University Space Technology Developmentof Tokyo, which has been initially Agency (Thailand) and IIS. The
used to collect data from MODIS. MODIS raw data from AIT receivThe dish has been placed on the roof ing facility is transferred to the IISof the 8-storey IIS building. In order archiving system as well throughto acquire Terra data for expanded Internet in real time.
continental-scale change researches
MODIS has 3 different modes
into the Southeast Asian sub-region,
the IIS has provided Asian Center of spatial resolutions - 250m, 500m
for Research on Remote Sensing and 1000m - with 36 spectral bands

MODIS receiving antenna on the roof of IIS

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 3

Satellite coverage by IIS and AIT receiving stations

page 5in total. The IIS Station covers theeast part of Asia including the east
Siberia, and the AIT Station covers
the southeast Asia including India,
a part of Pakistan and Tibet Plateau. At present, our research groupis preparing satellite data products
relating to the global and regional
environmental studies.
As a part of our research activities using the MODIS data, wehave carried out a research project
to monitor "Heat Island" byanalyzing the land use/land covercharacterization and heat parameters around cities. For conducting
the research study, we have selected five cities in the East Asia
region, those are: Tokyo (Japan),Seoul (South Korea), Pyongyang(North Korea), Beijing and Shanghai (China), which are within therange of IIS receiving station coverage.
In the study, the land cover characterization and the "Heat Island"
intensity are analyzed by comparing the images of summer versus
winter, and day versus night time
for the cities. The first step of thestudy is to make the land cover classification of the areas using 250m
resolution optical images. Build up,
forest, grass, water body and baresoil are classified in order to givethe emissivities of the land covercategories. The emissivity is thenused to estimate the land surface
temperature from the brightness
temperature value in the thermalband image with 500m resolution
data. Finally the "Heat Island" impact is analyzed. The land surface
temperature is of course influenced
by the geographic condition such as
the climate and whether at the timeof the area. In order to compare
the "Heat Island" impact among thecities, the standardized surface temperature images are prepared byequalizing the temperature valuesof forested region in suburbs wherethe "Heat Island" effect is supposed
to be unrelated. As the intermediate report, the study concludes that

MODIS 250m optical and 500m thermal images covering
Tokyo, Seoul, Pyongyang and Shanghai (from top)
the intensive of the heat island impact is ordered by Tokyo, Seoul,
Pyongyang, Beijing and Shanghai.
Continuous observation will bemade for more quantitative analysis
using more stable satellite information which avoid the temporal error
such as whether condition and sensor anomalies. Our group expect thatthe study can define the vegetation
function to the "Heat Island". Fur-thermore, some more cities fromSouth East Asia such as Bangkok,
Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta,
Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, covered
by AIT broadcasting station will be
added for the study.
For further information on thisparticular research topic or on
any of our research activities, theauthor can be contacted by e-mailat yyauoka@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 3

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Bridging between Policy and Research
By
Takefumi Takahashi
ICUS welcomes Mr. Takefumi Takahashi, the Director General for Disaster Management at the
Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan, as a Visiting Professor to the Urban Safety and Disaster
Mitigation Division. In this article, Prof. Takahashi introduces his new activities at ICUS.

I have been serving as a Visiting Professor in the Urban Safety
and Disaster Mitigation Division of
the International Center for Urban
Safety Engineering since 1st December, 2001. In my official capacity as the Director General for Disaster Management of the Cabinet
Office, I am responsible for coordinating disaster-related administrative activities in the national government of Japan.
As you may know, Japan is very
susceptible to natural hazards because of its geographic location, topography, climate and other conditions. Thus, it is subject to frequent
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,floods, typhoons, etc. Furthermore,
50% of population and 75% of theproperty are accumulated on alluvium plains which cover 10% of thecountryís total area and are at avery high risk of suffering floods.
Due to such land use patterns, Japan is very vulnerable to natural
disasters. Although we can not
avoid such natural hazards, weshould have countermeasures inplace in order to mitigate potential
damages.

Miyake Island near Tokyo erupted.
They brought economic losses, but
no one was killed or injured. The
absence of human casualties can be
attributed to the coordinated efforts
made by researchers, administrative
organizations and citizens. In particular, three factors are worth mentioning. First, an accurate prediction
prepared by continuous observation
made a great contribution. Second,an effective network among research organizations and national andlocal governments enabled proper information dissemination and timely
evacuation orders. Third, a good response on the part of local residents
facilitated swift evacuation. With
these three factors in a good combination, the whole system proved to
be functional and negative impacts
were minimized.
It would be possible to further re-

Two years ago, Mt. Usu in
Hokkaido and Mt. Oyama in theProf. T. Takahashi

duce negative impacts caused bynatural hazards if we prepare
proper countermeasures based ona good understanding of potential
disaster risks. Towards this goal,
many hazard maps for earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, geo-hazards, etc. have been developed inrecent years. They have been disseminated to citizens and relatedorganizations who understand theirimportance.
I would like to investigate how
to disseminate disaster-related information, such as observated information and research outcomes,
so as to implement effective disaster countermeasures. I would
also like to examine how to prepare proper disaster manual to be
distributed among administrative
offices, representative persons andcitizens. Being in charge of disaster management, I will do my utmost to improve coordination between the research organizations
and administration.
I would like to have many opportunities to exchange ideas.
Therefore, it is my strong wish thateveryone works together for disaster management in Japan as wellas other countries.

ICUS ACTIVITY RECORDS* Prof. Y. Yasuoka attended the22nd Asian Conference on
Remote Sensing held in Singapore from November 5-9, 2001.
* Prof. T. Takahashi joined
ICUS as Visiting Professor on
December 1, 2001.
* Profs. T. Uomoto and S. Misra
attended the International
C o m m i s s i o n o n C o n c re t eModel Code for Asia (ICCMC)
held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia during December 3-4, 2001.
* Dr. S. Ochi attended the 1st
Asian Eco-Seminar held in
Kathmandu, Nepal from December 3-5 , 2001.
* Dr. D. Dutta attended International Hydrological Programme(IHP-5) regional meeting at

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 3

Hanoi during November 1820, 2001. After the meeting,he carried out a field survey
in the lower Mekong basin
together with his colleagues
from IIS.
* ICUS held the Civil Engineering Seminar on Urban Safety
at the Komaba Campus of IIS
on 11 December, 2001.

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ICUS held Civil Engineering Seminar on Urban Safety
The 8th Civil Engineering
Seminar, organized by the Comprehensive Research Foundationand the School of Civil Engineering of the University of Tokyo,
was held on December 11, 2001
at IIS with about 60 audiences.
The theme of the seminar was"Urban Safety Engineering" andthe speakers were the five faculty members of ICUS, who presented on the following themes.
Prof. Y. Yasuoka presented alecture on "The Assessment of
Safety and Amenity of Urban Infrastructure using Information
Technology" in which he explained that Remote Sensing
technology and Image Processing can be a powerful tool todescribe the quality of the urban
environments.
Assoc. Prof. R. Ooka presented on "Urban Climate Simulation Model for Urban Planning" in which the mechanism ofHear Island phenomenon was
explained and a simulation model
for urban climate analysis wasintroduced.

Prof. Uomoto, ICUS Director, presenting his views on urban safety
Assoc. Prof. K. Meguro presented on "Towards Tokai Earthquake -Balancing Structural andNon-structural Measures for
Minimizing Earthquake Damage"in which he stressed the importance to retrofit existing weaker
houses and to have proper disaster manuals for implementing goodcountermeasures.
Prof. T. Takahashi presented on"National Policy and Countermeasures of Japan for Urban
Safety and Disaster Reduction" inwhich the strategic idea of Government of Japan was introduced.
Prof. T. Uomoto presented on"Current Status and Future of
Non-destructive Inspections forConcrete Structures" in which
several advanced technologies
to assess the safety of the concrete structures were introduced.
Further details of this seminarare available at the home pageof ICUS.
(By Ochi)International Symposium on Geoinformatics in September 2002
An International Symposium on
Geoinformatics for Spatial Infrastructure Development in Earth andAllied Sciences (GISIDEAS' 2002)
is going to be held in Hanoi, Vietnam during September 25-28, 2002.
It is organized by the Japan-Vietnam Geoinformatics Consortium.
The Symposium will focus on integration of Information Technol-

ogy tools for the development of spatial databases and the utilization of
spatial data for mathematicalmodeling and computer simulation ofprocesses related to our natural andsocial environment. It aims not only
to serve as a forum for scientificexchanges but also as a conduit fortechnology transfer through shortcourses that will be organized within
the framework of the symposium. In

order to promote a better understanding of specific needs, field excursions and visits are also being
planned.
The further details of the Symposium information are available in
web site http://gisws. media.osakacu.ac.jp/gisideas, which provides
on-line registration facilities forparticipating in the Symposium.

Visitors to ICUS
During the period of OctoberDecember, 2001, ICUS received
the following visitors.
- Mr. Raffaele Raja, Regione
Lambardia
Unita
Organizzativa Protezione Civile, Italy (Oct. 24).

- Mr. Jia Kunji, Chinese Embassy,
Tokyo, Japan (Nov. 15).
- Dr. Bui Ta Long, Director of Institute of Applied Mechanics,
Vietnam (Nov. 19).
- Dr. Jorge F. Meneses-Loja, Assistant Scientist, University ofCalifornia, San Diego, USA(Nov. 21).
- Prof. Tso-Chin Pan, Directorof the Protective Technology
Research Centre, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore (Nov. 27).

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Four students from ICUS won the prize at JSCE conferenceThis year, the annual conferenceof Japan Society of Civil Engineers(JSCE) was held at the Kumamoto
University, Kyushu during October
2-4, 2001. In the conference, about
4,000 technical papers were presented in seven sessions and over
7,000 research engineers and university students participated. From
ICUS/INCEDE, the faculty mem-bers and students attended the conference and made their presentations. Our center's research outcomes got good impression from theparticipants as the result of that four
students listed below won the prizeof best presentation by young researcher. Comparing the average
ratio of the prize winners with thatof our center, our center's winner ra-

tio was very high. It showed thehigh quality of ICUS/INCEDE's researches and high performance ofthe center.
Names of the winners are: Ms.
Ema Tsukahara (supervised by
Prof. Uomoto), Mr. Ms. Misaki
Enomoto, Mr. Muneyoshi Numada
and Mr. Suguru Fujita (supervised
by Prof. Meguro).

Editor's Notealso remember our experience ofthe sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway system in 1995.

as an expert of disaster politics
from the Cabinet Office of theGovernmentent of Japan on December 1, 2001. By his joining
to ICUS, we expect ICUS cancontribute more effectively to thestrategy preparation of domestic
as well as international disaster
policies lead by the Japanese
Government.

Not only researchers for urban
safety, but also the most citizens
are conscious of comprehensive
safety of our society and its functions, after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, USA.
The affair awoke us that it is actually impossible to go on without risks in this complex and international society. We, Japanese

ICUS does not directly target on
the researches for the counter-terrorism at this moment, however, itaims to develop systems to preventsocial emergency and the countermeasures for them from engineering aspects. ICUS has timely welcomed Prof. Takefumi Takahashi

ICUS/INCEDE, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
Tel: (+81-3)-5452-6472, Fax: (+81-3)-5452-6476, http://icus-incede.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

International Center for Urban Safety Engineering, ICUS/INCEDE
Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

ICUS/INCEDE Newsletter Vol. 1, No. 3(S. Ochi)