2019. 11. 1

Japan Society of Civil Engineers
International Activities Center

IAC News No.85
2019 JSCE Annual Meeting Report
International Workshop for Young Civil Engineers
IAC International Student Network Group held the International Workshop for Young Civil
Engineers, as part of the 21st International Summer Symposium, on September 3rd at
Kagawa Prefectural Comprehensive Social Welfare Center. The workshop targeted theinternational students who were studying in Japan and the international young civilengineers who were working in Japan, under the theme of “When a Mega Disaster Strikes…
-How would you respond if you were a mayor?-.” This workshop is very unique because theYoshihiro Okumura

mayors in the Miyagi Prefecture experienced the same workshop half a year before the 2011 （Kansai University）
Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.
Twenty-seven participants were divided into fivegroups, and they played the mayor of city damaged bya mega earthquake and tsunami disaster. Each group
discussed Common Operational Picture (COP) andIncident Action Plan (IAP): in what situation the city
should be in a week. Then, they reported theobjectives, post-disaster policies and practices like aParticipants at the Workshop Closing

real mayor in a pseudo-press conference.
The participants’ comments are:・Thank you very much for arranged this event which it was very interesting anduseful for engineering field.
・It was very useful information and lesson learned for foreign student due to theinformation include how to prepare when severe disaster happens.
・I would love to join this kind of event again. I will invite my classmate or next year
students to join this WS next year.

The Workshop was based on ISO 22320, which is the international standard of emergency
management. The experience that the participants gained in the workshop would help them tofunction well in any field, in any company, in any country where they will work.

1A Mayor Reports at a Press Conference
Participants Discuss Post-DisasterPolicies【Reported by Yoshihiro Okumura, Associate Professor of
The Faculty of Societal Safety Sciences, Kansai University】

Activities of Committee on Environmental System
1. History of the Committee on Environmental Systems
The Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) has been dealing with environmental issues foralmost half a century, since the first symposium for environmental issues was held as part ofthe conference of the JSCE in 1972, the year of the United Nations Conference on the HumanEnvironment. Since then, instead of focusing only on pollution problems caused by industrial
activities, the JSCE has introduced equipment and social systems that intermediate between
humans and the environment and established the Subcommittee on Environmental Issues
Yasuhiro Arai

within the JSCE with the aim of developing sustainable national land for the long term. As a （Secretary‐Committee
result, various researches and initiatives have been disseminated through symposia on General,
on Environmental
environmental issues and collections of symposium lectures and papers. Moreover, the Systems）
Committee on Environmental Systems (first chaired by Tomitaro Sueishi) was established in1988 and continues under the same name today. The Committee regards the natural environment as a system,
based on the relationship among the natural environment,
humans, and the society in which people live.
2. Workshop for Presenting Papers on Environmental
Systems and Symposia
The Committee on Environmental Systems holds workshops forpresenting research papers on environmental systems once a yearand a symposium for environmental systems and local
symposiums several times a year (Photo 1). The purpose is toorganize environmental system studies and disseminate
researches, proposals, and practical reports that focus on building
2

Photo 1 The 58th Symposium forEnvironmental Systems

the system infrastructure for society and the environment. The Committee addresses many issues, varying fromthose concerning local areas to the global environment, and approaches the researches from different
perspectives, such as environmental fate, planning, maintenance, evaluation, economy, system, information,awareness, education, and ethics.
3. Various Activities of Subcommittees
While the three subcommittees that support essential activities including thesis review, awarding, anddigitization play a major role in the Committee, there are also other subcommittees that deal with themes suchas environmental system business development, review of research on environmental systems, globalization,
health and the environment, the SDGs, and symbiotic communities with regional circulation. They together workon promoting systematic researches and outreach, and exploring new frontiers. In particular, as part ofinternational cooperation with the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE), the ISIE 6th Asia-PacificConference (Tsingtao, China) was held in September 2018 and the ISIE 10th International Conference (Beijing,China) was held in July 2019 co-hosted with the Committee on Environmental Systems, JSCE (Photo 2).

Photo 2 The 10th International Conference on Industrial Ecology (from official website)【Reported by Yasuhiro Arai, Secretary-General, Committee on Environmental System】

Activities of Coastal Engineering Committee
1. Introduction
Coastal Engineering was founded in the United States as a branch of civil engineering in1950s. In Japan, the first conference of Coastal Engineering was held in 1954 and the Coastal
Engineering Committee (CEC) was organized as one of research-oriented committees ofJapan Society of Civil Engineering (JSCE) in the following year. The CEC significantly
contributed to the development of Coastal Engineering in Japan through annual Coastal
Engineering Conferences and through technical supports for Coastal Law launched in 1956 Yoshimitsu Tajima
and for editing and revisions of Design Manual for Coastal Facilities.

3（Secretary-General,Coastal EngineeringCommittee）

2. Recent Activities of Coastal Engineering Committee
Thenumberof

annualCoastalEngineering Conference held by the year
2019 has reached 66. This three-day
conference with total participants ofaround 2500 consists of a symposium, aspecial session and around 300 oralpresentations with publication of JSCE
journal papers. We now have an option forauthors to give an oral presentation
without publishing JSCE journal paperand instead writing a journal paper for
Coastal Engineering Journal in order tothe respond to the needs of various

Figure 1 Measured surge heights around Osaka Bay after Typhoon Jebi

researchers.
Coastal Engineering Journal (CEJ), formerly the journal Coastal Engineering in Japan, launched in 1958 by theCEC, is included in the list of Science Citation Index journals. The CEJ, with the recent Impact Factor of higherthan 2, is one of the leading international journals in the coastal engineering field. Since further improving andadvancing of the CEJ is one of important tasks, the CEC strongly supports the editorial board of the CEJ.
Besides annual conferences and publications of journals, the CEC now has five research-oriented subcommittees and 2 working groups to conduct various research activities in collaboration with other societies andcommittees. The CEC also has conducted coastal disaster surveys in various countries such as the Philippines,
the United States and Bangladesh. Especially after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 and Hurricane Irma and Maria in
2017, the CEC conducted joint surveys respectively with the survey teams of the Philippines (PICE) and theUnited States (ASCE). In 2018, we also conducted the disaster surveys of the storm surge and waves around the
Osaka Bay induced Typhoon Jebi. The results of the survey, shown in Figure 1, were reported in the session,
which is outlined on the website of the CEC and published as a survey report in the CEJ.
【Reported by Yoshimitsu Tajima, Secretary-General, Coastal Engineering Committee】

JSCE UK Section Report～Short Course on Railway Traffic Optimisation～Railway Research Group of University College London ran a one-day short course on railway
traffic optimisation on Friday 16 August 2019 in collaboration with Beijing Jiaotong Universityand Rome Tre University.
The course aimed to provide basic knowledge about the algorithms and techniques currently
available for railway traffic optimisation, to railway practitioners. The motivation was that, as
the rail industry goes to ‘digital’ and Traffic Management Systems are expected to act as a key
enabler, practitioners who are not necessarily system engineers or programmers, but project4managers, signal engineers or those in any other capacities, now need to understand basic
algorithms and techniques for Traffic Management Systems as well as necessary data
input/output arrangements.
The short course attracted more than 50 participants, and some practitioners are even from othercountries including the USA, France and India.
【Programme】
・Introduction
・State of the Art on Railway Traffic Management
・Lecture 1: Train Timetabling Using Linear Integer Programming
・Lecture 2: Train Rescheduling Using Job Shop Scheduling・Discussion and Conclusion【Lecturers】
・Prof. Benjamin Heydecker (University College London)・Dr. Taku Fujiyama (University College London)
・Prof. Andrea D’Ariano (Roma Tre University)
・Dr. Yihui Wang (Beijing Jiaotong University)

Prof. Benjamin Heydecker(University College London)

Dr. Taku Fujiyama(University College London)

Prof. Andrea D’Ariano(Roma Tre University)

Dr. Yihui Wang
(Beijing Jiaotong University)5Updates◆“DOBOKU Collection 2019” (November 14〜17, 2019)https://dobokore8.webnode.jp/◆“DOBOKU DAY Symposium 2019” (November 24, 2019)http://committees.jsce.or.jp/cprcenter/node/198◆Up-coming Events

1. 2019 Site Excursion & Joint Company Information Session in Osaka (November 25, 2019)2. 2019 Joint Company Information Session in Tokyo (December 7, 2019)
3. 3rd Seminar on the Dissemination of Japanese Technical Standards Overseas (December 17, 2019)http://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/node/154
4. Japanese Civil Engineers the Global Leaders Symposium Series No.15 (February 5, 2020)◆jhappy - JICA’s Grant Aid Cooperation Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jhappy20161110/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jhappy_official◆The International Infrastructure Archives– A Compilation of Japan’s Greatest Projects in Transfer of Civil Engineering Technology in Service –http://www.jsce.or.jp/e/archive/◆Asian Civil Engineering Coordinating Council (ACECC) International Newsletter
http://www.acecc-world.org/newsletter.html◆IAC “News Pick Up!!” on the JSCE Japanese website
http://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/node/118◆Summary of featured articles in JSCE Magazine Vol. 104, No.11, November 2019http://www.jsce-int.org/pub/magazine◆Journal of JSCE
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