ICUS NEWSLETTER
International Center for Urban Safety Engineering

Institute of Industrial Science
The University of Tokyo

VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1
APRIL -JUNE 2004

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

WORKING AT INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
By
Ken SUDO*
I worked at four international
institutes for 27 years, includingInternational Center for DisasterMitigation Engineering(INCEDE)
which was a ten-year program, from1991 to 2001, by the Institute ofIndustrial Science (IIS), Universityof Tokyo. All organizations are/were
aiming to make our Earth safer fromnatural disaster and safer from
nuclear weapon. In this short article,
my observation and experiences atthese organizations are mentioned.
IISEEInternational Institute ofS e i s m o l og y a n d E a r t h q u a ke

E n g i n e e r i n g ( I I S E E ) wa s
established in 1962 jointly by theJapanese Gover nment and theUnited Nations. The establishment
was based on a resolution of theGeneral Assembly of the United
Nations. This resolution was afollow-up of the initiative byInternational Association ofEarthquake Engineering which took
place in 1960 at the IIS. Prominent
professors of IIS such as the lateProfessors Shunzo Okamoto and
Keizaburo Kubo devoted themselvesto this initiative as their contribution
to earthquake disaster reduction in
the world.

The objective of the IISEE is tofoster engineers and seismologists
in the field of earthquake disastermitigation, in particular, in thed eve l o p i n g wo r l d . S i n c e i t s
inception, more than 1,000
participants from 105 countries havereportedly finished courses whichwere programmed by international
well-known experts. Nowadays
large alumni of IISEE are playing
the central role in earthquake
disaster management in therespective countries. IISEE is still
active in conducting its mission. I
was involved in diversity programsof IISEE for 15 years.

Shaking test of actual 7-story apartment house at the Almaty city

page 2
One of the programs which I
was in charge was for seismic risk
reduction of the Almaty city in the
Republic of Kazakhstan. Almaty is
located in a high seismic region at
the northern foot of the Tien-Shan
Mountains. Kazakhstan was one ofthe developed republics among theformer Soviet Union. Collapse of
the Soviet regime led the Republic
to serious economic disruption.
Under the marketing economy,m o s t i nv e s t m e n t h a s b e e naddressed to business potentially
producing more benefit quickly.
Disaster management which theg ov e r n m e n tshouldtake
responsibility has been put in lesspriority issues. Needless to say,
Kazakhstan is not exceptional.
There are many disaster prone
countries in the world where evenpoor measures against disastercannot be taken.
M y a c t iv i t i e s f o c u s e d o nknowledge transfer to researchers
in the Institute of Seismology at
Almaty. They were enthusiasticallykeen to absorb any knowledge. Any
lectures and colloquia were filledwith many participants. Thesemeetings were followed by hot
discussion. I am ver y muchsatisfied with my activities at theInstitute. A charming and verymuch talented secretary helped mewith excellent faithfulness. She
viewed my lecture notes before theclasses to understand what I wasgoing to talk. So that she spoke as
if she herself was a teacher. I took
opportunities to observe full scale
shaking test of a 7-story building,while I was in the Institute. The test
wa s s p o n s o r e d by a g e n e r a lcontractor (see the photo on the 1stpage) which has its industrial base

My staff at the office of IISEE,
Republic of Kazakhstan

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

at Almaty. They said that such test
has not been conducted since thebeginning of 1990s. The successful
test has encouraged researchers tod ev e l o p f u r t h e r s t u d i e s f o rearthquake disaster mitigation.
T h e l u n c h t i m e wa s a no p p o r t u n i t y t o k n ow wh a t
Kazakhstan people think in daily
life. My secretary and driver are of
mid thirty age. The first half of
their lives were under the Soviet
and the second under the marketinge c o n o my. T h e y t a l k e d a b o u tsummer holidays in forests while
they were children. Their parents
did not meet any costs for thecamp, contrarily, they need muchmoney for their children to spendlong summer vacation in forests.
Education in better school is also
costly. When they were children, no
education fee was charged fromtheir parents. Bread and butter
were certainly in hands, although
they had to be in long queue.
Nowadays, some poor people havedifficulty in even getting bread.
They talked that they realized thatricher people could get more
benef it in the current system. I
learned that the name of
Kazakhstan was taken after Khazar
Kingdom which existed in the 810th century around the CaspianSea and which is thought to be thehome place of Ashekenazi people.
The Ashkenazi people must be oneof key-people to understand themodern world.
IDNDRInternational Decade of Natural
Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) was
a n i n i t i a t iv e b a s e d o n t h eunanimous resolution of the United
Nations General Assembly in 1999.
This 10-year program started withenthusiastic welcome by disasterprone countries in the world. It wasthought that the 10-year, 19902000, would be enough to identify
problems to be solved for the safer
Earth in the 21 st century and toestablish institution/machinery forputting the issues into practice The
IDNDR Secretariat at Geneva,
h oweve r, c o u l d n o t h e l p a ny
initiatives and undertakings by

Newspaper clip of ‘Tashkent
Evening News’.
scientif ic communities orengineering
associations
financially, as the Secretariat had
no mechanism for regularly getting
money. The funding was made on
voluntary base at willingness ofdonor agencies. Actually theJapanese Government made thelargest contribution. It reachedalmost 60 % of total operational
expense.
I was at position to monitor
scientific activities undertaken at
va r i o u s p l a c e s by d i ff e r e n torganizations. I learned that many
projects are stranded due tofinancial difficulties. Therefore theSecretariat itself had to launch
projects to encourage the world.
RADIUS project was one of theseprojects.
A Symposium about VAN by
International Council of ScientificUnion (ICSU) was another. In the
beginning of 1990, most seism o l og i s t s we r e v e r y m u c hpessimistic in earthquake
prediction. Nevertheless, Greek
physicists claimed that the VAN
method needed to be paid more
attention. Sir James Lighthill of
I C S U t h o u g h t t h a t t h e r e wa s
something in VAN as Professor
Kanamori of California InstituteTechnology commented to the
Science, a well-known scientificjournal. All papers presented in thiss u c c e s s f u l s y m p o s i u m we r ecompiled into a book, titled as‘ C r i t i c a l R ev i ew o f VA N ’published by World Scientif ic

page 3P r e s s . I wa s i nvo l v e d i ncoordination of the Symposium.
Dr. Sir James was of strongly
scientific curiosity and He neverh a d p r e j u d i c e s t owa r d ' s a ny
scientific view. He tried to see only
facts. His manner moved him todare hold the symposium. It is verymuch pity that he passed away soonafter the Symposium by an accident
in the sea.
INCEDE
After retiring from the job asdirector of IISEE, I was invited as
Director of International Centre forDisaster–Mitigation Engineering(INCEDE) in the summer of 1996.
It should be surprising to see that
only four permanent staff members
were conducting many international
collaborative projects, holding‘Open Lecture’, managing the
INCEDE human network, andpublishing INCEDE Newsletter,having help by a couple of beautiful
and hard-working secretaries.
Communication through the
Network taught me that people
struggling with diasters in therespective countries wanted to know
wh a t o t h e r p e o p l e d i d, wh a tt e c h n o l og y o r d ev i c e s we r eavailable and many different things.
The Newsletter responded to thesewishes. Any INCEDE Newsletterswere responded by voices fromreaders in the world. In an issue of
the Newsletter, two articles on VAN
we r e p u t . Two p r o m i n e n t
researcher, Drs. Seiya Uyeda(Professors Emeritus of the
University of Tokyo) for VAN andRobert Geller ( Professor of the
University of Tokyo) against VAN,
kindly contributed articles. Since bysome reasons any article for VAN
had not appeared in the public atthat time, this issue was welcome in
the world and many copies of thisissue were sent to many readers in
addition to regular readers.
I had a visit by the director ofnatural disaster department in acountry in the Caribbean Sea. She
took an opportunity to observe
monitoring systems and devices
against disaster, while she wasstaying in Japan. At volcanic sites,

she saw a monitoring system
consisting of many high-technology
sensors and automatic information
process on real time. At other sites,
she saw that more than 1000 GPS
data were analyzed on real timebase to reveal how Japan islands
were deformed by the plate motion.
Certainly it will be powerful tool forearthquake prediction. Right before
her leaving for her country, shesighed, saying ‘in principle humanbeing can know when a volcano
w i l l e r u p t a n d h ow a l a rg eearthquake will occur at where. But
it is not our case’. I could not find
my response to her words.
CTBTO
In 2002 autumn, I was invited asa unit head of Comprehensive
N u c l e a r Te s t B a n Tr e a t y
O rg a n i z a t i o n ( C T B TO ) . T h e
Organization needed my knowledge
and experiences on seismologicalanalysis. When a nuclear atomic
bomb is exploded under the groundsurface, elastic waves are generated
within the Earth. The waves arevery much similar to seismic waves.
CTBTO has a verification systemof nuclear explosion test. The
central component of the system is
detection of events which might begenerated by explosion. For thispurpose, CTBTO deploys global
observation network comprising ofaround 300 sensors: two thirds areseismographs and the others forhydroacoustic, infrasound andradioactive nuclide observation.
A n a ly s i s o f s i g n a l s f r o m t h e
network is my task. It is almost
seismological work.
Readers of this Newsletter may
think that the above observations, inparticular, geophysical observations
can benefit studies on earth scienceand natural disaster monitoring. I
wish to suggest you to contact your
Government, if you are interested in
the data and if you wish to accessthe data.
There are difference between
the United Nation office at Geneva
and Vienna International Center
wh e r e C T B TO, I n t e r n a t i o n a l
Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA), and

CTBTO building
other United Nation Organizations.
Security system at the Vienna ismuch more strict. No body canenter the inside of the building
without certification. In order toreach my office, anybody has topass through one more gate whichis always locked. Some data might
be related to nuclear weapons. Thisis the reason why so strict security
is kept. Needless to say, data
handling is also controlled understrict rule.
Another difference of CTBTO
from IDNDR is in budgetarysystem. While IDNDR had nofinancial base, CTBTO is financedby member countries. The Japanese
government meets 20% of the total
budget. There are five Japanese
staff members among total 250.
Only 2% is too small, compared tof inancial contribution by theJapanese Government. The rate ofJapanese staff is also very small inother organizations. The Permanent
Mission of the Japanese
G ove r n m e n t t o I n t e r n a t i o n a l
Organization at Vienna is always tokeen to increase the number ofJapanese staff at the organizations.
Acknowledgement
I thank Prof. Uomoto and his
staff of ICUS for providing me withthe space for this article. Also I
wish to have your permission to say
my gratitude to Ms. Yasuko Fujitani
who had helped me with the mostfaithfulness while I was in IIS. I do
hope ICUS will achieve further
works helpful to safer Japan, safer
Asia and safer world.
*Professor, CTBTO,
Preparatory commission for thecomprehensive nuclear-test-ban
treaty organization, Vienna

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

page 4

Reports Published by the Research Committee RC-39“Research on Sustainable Engineering for Urban Safety”(1)The Research Committee on Sustainable Engineering for Urban Safety (Rc-39) established by the ICUS, has beenworking since April, 2002. Besides the members of the faculty of the Center, the committee comprises of 16 privatecompanies and research organizations.
The reports written by the 5 working groups were published in March, 2004 in Japanese. The five ‘working groups’ wereas follows and a brief explanation of each report is given here in after.
WG1: Methods to handle aging infrastructure (Secretary: Mr. Kenji SHIBA, Shimizu Corporation)
WG2: Global environment (Secretary: Mr. Hidenobu NAKAI, The Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc.)
WG3: Study on heat islands in urban environments (Secretary: Mr.Haruhido TSUBAKI, Kajima Corporation)
WG4: Disaster prevention and response (Secretary: Mr. Seiichiro FUKUSHIMA, Tokyo Electric Power Services Co., Ltd.)(Abstract To be published in vol.4-2)
WG5: Developments in sensing technology and its applications (Secretary: Mr. Yukio AKAMATSU, Kokusai Kogyo Co., Ltd.)(Abstract To be published in vol.4-2)

WG1: Methods to handle
aging infrastructure
Japan’s dramatic economic
growth was remarkable during thesixty years after the Second World
War. Social infrastructure was also
developed. Those constructed in theearly phase are now aging ands t a r t i n g t o r e q u i r e r e n ewa l .
According to 2003 White Paper on
Land, Infrastructure and Transportin Japan, the social capital stock was
405 trillion yen as of 2001. It led isthe prospect that, as themaintenance/management andrenewal cost for 2025 should be
about 10 trillion yen, such costneeds to be increased by 150 billion
yen every year for the next 10 years.
Replacement was once preferred forthe social capital infrastructures
based on the strategy “Scrap andBuild”. However, the shift to “Stockand Renovation” is now prioritizedin the eco-friendly and recycle
oriented society of the modern
world. Therefore, aging structures
should be properly managed andrenewed to sustain the function ofurbanized areas.
From this viewpoint, Aging
Structure Working Group studied
aging structures from three aspects:
Engineering (Physics), Function andEconomy and identified issues thatneed to be addressed to carry out theeffective asset management. Basedon the case study of “BANKOKUBASHI (BANKOKU Bridge)” theICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

concrete road bridge built about 65
years ago in Yokohama, Maintenanceand Management Guidelines ofSocial Capital Stock (for “System
Design”) was developed.
T h e s t u d y o n BA N KO K U BASHI revealed that structures may
sustain its semi-permanent material
life with the minimum cost as far as
they are properly designed, built,
a n d u n d e rg o n e s u ff i c i e n t
construction management unless it
was uniquely designed or affectedby unavoidable environmental
actions. On the other hand, it also
reminded the importance of
establishing the framework to
sufficiently maintain such social
assets to accept the extension offunctionality of the structures as
they age in order to meet the needsof the society. Some issues remainunverified from the study which was
conducted for less than 2 years.
Thus, we are determined to further
study this issue to develop an overall
asset management policy.
WG2: Global environment
Keeping in mind that global
warming due to greenhouse gases(GHGs) emissions by fossil fuels is
one of the most critical issues that
we need to cope with immediately,
we have explored how to estimate
the GHGs emissions from activities
within cities by reviewing existingstudies in order to figure out factors
which influence most to GHG

emission reduction.
Based on the recent study(Kiriyama et al "Urban and Land
Structure for Lower Environmental
I m p a c t s " , J o u r n a l o f Po l i cy
Research for Land, Infrastructure
and Transport, Vol. 12, 2002), theelectricity consumption per capita
has a tendency that is higher in city
center and lower in suburbs. It isalso noted that there is little
difference among total consumption
between city center and suburbs,
despite the fact that the density ofelectric appliances tends to increasein a small size house of city centerand the amount of automobile
energy consumption from residence
is lower in city center than insuburbs.
According to our findings, there
are very few studies indicating thepossible future scenarios covering
energy demand increase, population
trends, changes of economic
situation in various regions, andurban life style changes in the
future, even though some studies
show that GHGs emissions can beroughly estimated by statisticalanalysis of existing available data.
For pursuit of the ultimate goal,
which is the establishment of theeffective and accurate tool toestimate and forecast GHG
emissions by urban activities, it isexactly needed to cooperate withwisdom in various related field suchpage 5as engineering, geog raphy,
economics, science. Although, we
believe that we have found the key
issues to be solved, this study was
only able to reach the door to the
future goal. We are hoping to continue
the study on the issues in any way.
WG3: Study on heat islands
in urban environments
In order to develop a so-calledsustainable city, it is necessary to
study about a sustainability ofurban infrastructures organizing thecity and environmental influence of
these infrastructures. There arem a ny f a c t o r s o f t h e u r b a n
infrastructure development that
affect the environment in cities,
such as air the pollution, waterpollution, noise problem, etc. Thiswo r k i n g g r o u p f o c u s e d a n di nve s t i g a t e d t h e h e a t i s l a n dphenomenon which is rapidly

increasing in Japan . The heatisland phenomenon has a very
complicated mechanism so that anumerical simulation based on amathematical model is very usefulfor this investigation. So we carriedout a numerical simulation of
Hanshin district where the airtemperature is getting remarkably
high in recent years using remotesensing data. Specifically speaking,we shared the preparation of initial
data with Nakanihon Air Service,
the simulation of meso-scaleatmosphere with University of
To kyo a n d t h e h e a t b a l a n c eanalyses at the ground surface with
Kajima Cooperation. The subjects
below were investigated.
(1)Development of numericalsimulation method using dataobtained from MSS fitted to an
aircraft as a tool to predict anenvironment in cities.

(2)A difference from prediction
accuracies depended on sets ofland covering data for thep u r p o s e o f e s t a bl i s h i n gnumerical simulation method.
Under restriction of two years
period, this working group could
obtain excellent results on thesesubjects because it has beenorganized from specialists of manyf ields, such as architecture andb u i l d i n g , c iv i l e n g i n e e r i n g ,geographic information and so on,
and could carry out an analysis of
the heat island phenomenon frommany technical views.
We hope these results canc o n t r i b u t e t o d eve l o p i n g asustainable city practically and makestudies about sustainability and theinfluence on the environment ofurban infrastructures progress.

The 6th ICUS Open Lecture
The 6th ICUS open lecture was
performed at the first meeting roomof IIS in the afternoon of April 9,
2004. The title of the open lecture
was “World and Japan, Peace andDisaster Prevention”. In the open
lecture, three interesting lectures
were given from the three famous
professors, Prof. Fukuwa, Prof.
Sudo and Prof. Okada. At the endof the lecture, special session wasorganized to discuss the importanceof safety engineering with the threeprofessors and the audience (90)from many different aspects. The
lecture ended at 17:00 but the talks
continued till the end of the cocktail
party after the lecture.
The title, brief explanations andthe lecturers were as follows:

1) Prof. N. F u ku wa , N agoya
University: “Disaster Mitigation
Strategy for Local Area Based onExperience in Nagoya Area ”,- In the near future, within 50
years, one or more large
earthquakes are expected tohappen in Shizuoka andNagoya area. To deal with theearthquake, lecture was given
how the government andprivate sectors are planningand working hard to preventand mitigate disasters in thisarea.
2) Pro f. K . S u d o, C T B TO
(Preparatory Commission for theComprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
Treaty Organization): “MyActivities for Safer and MorePeaceful Earth”,- Brief explanation of thelecture is given at the top of
this Newsletter. The lecture
was given by the former
director of INCEDE.
3 ) P ro f. H. Oka d a , Ho kk a i d oUniversity:“Successful
Predication for Volcanic Eruptionof Mt. Usu”,- The lecture was given how
the prediction was made at thetime of volcanic eruption of
Mt. Usu in Hokkaido.
Although the prediction was
successful due to detailed
inspection and monitoring of
the movement of the volcano,disaster may happen when theinspectors visited the site.

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

page 6

Technical Delegation from France
A technical delegation from
France visited ICUS on April 21,
2004. The mission of the French
team visit to Japan was to survey
the new technologies applied tolarge projects, newly developed
construction materials, risk andmanagement methodologies now
being used in Japan.
The team consisted of 14
members including senior officers
from French Embassy, Tokyo and it
was led by Mr. Daniel TARDY of
MEDEF (Mouvement desEntreprises de France). The
delegates were mostly from

French delegation with some ICUS
staff members

Prof. Uomoto explains various
activities of ICUS to the visitors

industrial sectors.
Prof. Uomoto, Dr. Meguro and
Dr. Ooka of ICUS presented recent
works on their respective areas ofresearch related to the interests of thevisitors and showed the their ongoing research activities at the
research laboratories. The delegateswere impressed by the wide range offundamental research andcollaborative research activities
performed at ICUS.

IIS Open House
The Institute of Industrial
Science opened the facilities to the
public on June 6 and 7, 2004. Our
ICUS (International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering) also
opened the facilities and explained
our activities both in English andJapanese. The title of the open
house of ICUS was “Towards Saferand Securer Built Environment in
Mega Cities in Asia”. Total numberof participants for two days was 120.
Under the umbrella of the ICUS
title, ICUS members' research titles
were as follows:
1) Dr. Kimiro Meguro:- Development of Integrated
Information System for Total
Disaster Management -2) Prof. Taketo Uomoto:- Methodology from Inspection
and Diagnosis to Repair Methodof Concrete Structures 3) Dr. Ryuzo Ooka:- Sustainable Urban Design with
CFD Simulation - Wi n d E n e rg y U s e a n d
Diffusion of Contaminants in
Urban Area with Wind Tunnel

Experiment 4) Prof. Yoshifumi Yasuoka:- Environment Monitoring andDisaster Assessment Using
Remote Sensing 5) Dr. Yoshitaka Kato:- Development of MaintenanceManagement System for
Existing Concrete Structures -ICUS Activity Records(June 23-26).
・Prof. Uomoto visited Zurich(Switzerland), Munchen, Berlin and ・Prof. Ooka participated in theconference on “Development ofKoln of Germany for participating
Urban and Building Models forin research activities related toDensely Populated Area withconcrete engineering (June 12-20).
Minimized Environmental Load in・Prof. Yasuoka and Dr. Endo
Hot and Humid Climate” andparticipated at the 8 th MODIS
attended the annual meeting of
meeting at Bangkok, Thailand with
ASHRAE at Nashville, USA (June
GISTDA and AIT on management
26-July 2).
and utilization of MODIS data

・Prof. Dutta visited AIT, Thailand
for collaborative research at RNUS
(June 15-Aug 31).
・ Dr. Kato attended the 4 t hInternational Conference on
Concrete under Severe Conditionsat Seoul, Korea (June 28 – July 1)
and visited AIT, Thailand forcollaborative research at RNUS
(July 2- 22).

Awards・Mr. Kei OOYOSHI, a student of Prof.
Yasuoka, won the best presentation
award at a Conference of the Japan
Society of Photogrammetry andRemote Sensing in June

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

・Mr.Pakawat SANCHAROEN, a
student of Prof. Uomoto, won the
excellent presentation award at theannual meeting of Japan Cement
Association in May.

・Mr. Kazumichi SHIRASE, a
student of Prof. Uomoto, won the
excellent presentation award at
the annual meeting of Japan
Cement Association in May.

page 7

- RNUS Activities An Introduction to RNUS
Project on Urban Flood
Modeling in Mekong Basin
Since inception, the Regional
Network Office for Urban Safety(RNUS) of ICUS/AIT has initiateds ev e r a l r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t s i ncollaboration with other research
institutes or private sectors. This is
one of sponsored research projects
of RNUS by private sector, whichaims at developing a system for
urban flood inundation simulationin the Lower Mekong river basin.
The project mainly focuses on
physically based surface-rivermodeling for flood inundation
simulation.
The model is developed withthe objective of integrating it withairborne and space borne resources
and numerical weather prediction
models for designing an integrated
flood warning system. An existing
distributed
surf ace-riverhydrological model developed at
the Public Work Research Institute(PWRI) of Japan is modified andimproved for Mekong river basin.
Initially, the existing model istested in a small river basin in
Japan with historical data and then,it is modified to make it suitable
for large basin for its applicationand verif ication in the MekongRiver basin with data of someselected major flood events. The
focused area in the Mekong basin
is Cambodian floodplains of the
Mekong, Tonle Sap and Bassac
Rivers. After successful
application, the model will beutilized as the flood simulation
model
of
a
proposedcomprehensive flood war ningsystem for the Mekong Basin.
For further information about
this project, please contact RNUS
by e-mail (r nus@ait.ac.th) orv i s i t t h e R N U S we b s i t e(http://www.sce.ait.ac.th/rnus/).

Schematic representation of the modeling concept
networking and infor mationICUS Report 5: Proceedings ofsharing with international
3rd WSSI Internationalorganizations. Important roles
Workshop is publishedplayed by WSSI as a catalyst in
RNUS spearheaded the editing initiating several activities for
activities of the ICUS Report 5, earthquake disaster reduction inwhich was published recently. This different countries are highlighted
volume of ICUS Report contains in the country reports. The fourt h e p r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e T h i r d papers on JICA related activities
International Workshop of the introduce major projects andWorld Seismic Safety Initiative programs of JICA on international( W S S I ) o n S e i s m i c R i s k cooperation, which have been
Management for countries of the implemented in an attempt toAsia Pacific Region. WSSI is an reduce seismic risk in different
undertaking of the International countries of Asia. The last section
A s s o c i a t i o n o f E a r t h q u a k e of the proceedings includes reports
f ive
international
Engineering. The workshop was f r o mheld in Bangkok, Thailand during organizations.
December 7-8, 2003 and was
For obtaining a copy of thisattended by 52 participants from19 countries. The organizing Report, you may contact RNUS byactivities of the workshop were e-mail (rnus@ait.ac.th).
coordinated by RNUS.
The proceedings include
country reports from 12 countries,
repor ts on inter-national
cooperation of JICA and reports
from other International
Organizations. The country reports
emphasized on the earthquake risk
mitigation effor ts, strategies,
responses and assessment
measures initiated in theirrespective countries. Most of thecountry reports focused on seismic
risk management activities in thelast f ive years, scope for futurecollaborations in the region forva r i e d r e s o u r c e s a n d f u r t h e r

Cover page of ICUS Report 5

ICUS Newsletter Vol. 4, No. 1

page 8
Editor’s Note
ICUS has been opening
international symposiums,
workshops, and open lectures tothe public every year, addition to
the activities required by IIS, suchas “Open House of Komaba
Campus” and “Open House of
Chiba Campus”. In this News
letter, the lecture given to us in the
open lecture by Prof. K. Sudo, theformer director of INCEDE, isintroduced. As given in the paper,
it is not an easy work to start a newactivity without any help from thepublic. Our ICUS was lucky
enough to overtake the networks offormer center “INCEDE”, andsucceeded in enlarging therelations with other organizations,
universities and industries
throughout the world.
Three years have passed since
ICUS started its activities in April,

2001. Many projects have been
performed among the staff membersof ICUS related to urban safetyengineering. Since April of 2001, 6
new staff members joined ICUS :Prof. S. Misra, Dr. T. Endo, Ms. M.
Yoshimura, Prof. T. Takahashi, Prof.
M. Setojima, and Prof. R. Amano.
But after one to two years of stay, 4
members, Dr. S. Ochi, Prof. S.
Misra, Prof. T. Takahashi and Prof.
M. Setojima have already left ICUS,
working hard during their stay in
ICUS. The secretaries of ICUS havealso changed: Ms. N. Shiuchi, Ms.
C. Murakami, Ms. V. Aravinthan,
Ms. Y. Ochi, Ms. S. Hazarika haveleft ICUS but Ms. E.Yoshimoto and
Ms. T. Fujita are taking over theirworks.
On May 5, we have a celebration
day for children in Japan. To
celebrate, large carps made of cloth
are hoisted in tall poles and let themswim in the air as shown in theInternational Center for Urban Safety Engineering, ICUS
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
E-mail:icus@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
http://icus.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

International Center for
Urban Safety Engineering

photograph. The carps are believed
to be live and strong fishes andpeople wish their children to growup with high spirits like carps.
Although members of ICUS arechanging year by year, we wish all
the members including former
members to support our activities
like the carps in the photograph.
Although ICUS is becoming one of
the top centers in Japan, we hope
our center to be one of the mostactive international center for urban
safety engineering throughout theworld.
(by Uomoto )Swimming carps and Mountain Fuji

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