IISEE Newsletter
June 29 2015
Number 122

In This Issue
 The 6th edition of theInternational
Conference on
COUPLED PROBLEMS
2015
 Latin American E. E.
Course - Reports on
Kansai Study Trip

International Institute of Seismology and Earthquake Engineering BRI Japan
1 Tachihara Tsukuba Japan 305-0802

tel+81-29-879-0678 facsim+81-29-864-6777

The sixth edition of the International Conference
on Computational Methods for Coupled Problems
in Science and Engineering (COUPLED PROBLEMS
2015)(http://congress.cimne.com/coupled2015/frontal/default.asp)

By Mr. Mizuo Inukai, Chief Research Engineer, IISEE Colloquium, General
Meeting & FriendshipPartyI participated in the sixth edition of theInternational Conference on Computational
Methods for Coupled Problems in Scienceand Engineering (COUPLED PROBLEMS2015) in May 18 through 20, 2015. TheConference is one of the Scientific
Conferences and took place once in 2 years
since 2005. This time it was held on theConference Center, San Servolo Island,
Venice City, Italy.
The Conference presented 380 full papers
or abstracts in oral presentations fromEurope, USA, Asia or South America. At thestart time, the Opening Ceremony was heldin the Auditorium (Photo 1), and many kinds of Sessions gave oralpresentations.
Photo 1: Opening Ceremony in
the Auditorium, the ConferenceCenter, San Servolo Island

IISEE Net andTraining
IISEENETIISEE-UNESCO Lecture
NoteIISEE E-learning
Synopsis Database
Bulletin DatabaseIn the afternoon session “Coupled Problems with Numerical and PhysicalSubdomain Interactions II” on the 2nd day, the author made a presentation of“Predominant periods of multi-degree-of-freedom system analysis and dynamic
soil-structure interaction for building structures”.
Technical Programme is on the Web“http://congress.cimne.com/coupled2015/fr
ontal/ProgIntro.asp”, the Abstracts areshown in these links, and the full papers ontheWeb“http://congress.
cimne.com/coupled2015/frontal/doc/Ebook_
COUPLED_15.pdf”.
The main public transportation in Venice
Island is city boats called as waterbuses, inItaly called as “vaporetti”. On the way to
the Conference, Photo 2 shows the view ofthe Piazza San Marco, Venice Island. Many
tourists are coming and everywhere is very
prosperous.

Photo 2: View of the Piazza
San Marco, Venice Island

Earthquakes
The 2011 off the Pacificcoast of Tohoku
Earthquake
Reports of Recent
Earthquakes
Utsu Catalog
Earthquake Catalog

Latin American Earthquake Engineering Course Reports on Kansai Study Trip
(1) Mr. Francisco Javier VALLES UROQUILLA (El Salvador)

I am very pleased to have had this opportunity to participate in this Latin
American Earthquake Engineering Course since I’ve been learning varuable
things from each expert’s experiences in related fields. Especially, it was very
impressive that we could visit many places in Japan
including Kobe.
The municipal authorities make plans based on thedisaster, and also they consider it very important tohave regulations on the disaster mitigation plans andinspectations on the construction site.
The education of its people is one thing many Latin
American countries must apply. It is a very importantphilosophy to learn from the erros we made and apply its lessons to reduce thehuman sacrifices in the future.
In Kyoto, with the buildings such as traditionally valuable temples, theyenhance such temples’ earthquake-resistance strength with little change totheir architecture; each society should make efforts and promises to realize it,
but it largely depends on the engineering technology’s improvement.

(2) Ms. Yolanda Elizabeth VAQUERANO CATIVO (El Salvador)
In our visit to Kobe on last June 4th, I found it very impressive the level ofawareness of municipal authorities about the topic of the constructions in thecity; they count with laws and professionals, to ensure that buildings are safe
against the possibility of any disaster.
The professionals of the municipality are responsible for
conducting regular inspections to ensure that thebuildings are within the legal framework and that havea high seismic efficiency.

Call for Papers
IISEE Bulletin is now
accepting submissionsof papers for the seismology, earthqu ake
engineering, andtsunami. Developing
countries are targeted,but are not limited.
Your original papers
will be reviewed by theeditorial members andsome experts.
NO submission fee isneed.
Try to challenge!!

On the other hand, I consider very important theopportunity that they give to the population to actively
participate, because they are involved in education
campaigns in the case of an emergency (like an earthquake), and also, because
they have the freedom to denounce any construction that they consider is notfollowing the security laws of the municipality.

(3) Mr. Mauricio Rene CHORRO (El Salvador)
The past June 3rd to June 8th of this year the Latin American Earthquake
Engineering Course had chance to make a trip toNagoya, Kobe, Kyoto and Tokyo.
In my opinion the best place of those which we havevisited was Disaster Mitigation Research Building. It is aplace where researchers are studying earthquakes anddisasters gathered. The center itself is a place toexperiment and develop earthquake resistant building
technologies. In daily life, the center provides advanced
research and education to all people who want to learn
more about these important topics.The second best place that made me awesome was the National ResearchInstitute for Earthquake and Disaster Prevention (E-Defense) which owns themajor section of the full-scale three-dimensional earthquake testing facility withsize of 15mx20m of shaking table creating the same complicated threedimensional earthquake motion.
In those places I learned more how to organize research on region collaborative
disaster prevention, simulate damage caused by seismic ground motion andtsunami, and develop systems for promoting measures for disaster prevention
and mitigation for the region.

(4) Mr. Nilton Reynaldo FERREL ZEBALLOS (Peru)
Five-day study trip to Kansai (Nagoya, Kobe, Kyoto and Tokyo) enabled us tounderstand many things:

Enjoy, Now

Contact Us
The IISEE Newsletter isintended to act as ago-between for IISEEand ex-participants.
We encourage you tocontribute a report andan article to this newsletter. Please let us
know your current
activities in yourcountries.
We also welcome yourco-workers and friends
to register our mailinglist.
iiseenews@kenken.go.jp
http://iisee.kenken.go.jp

We learned the tenacity, strength and perseverance of a man like Professor
Nobuo Fukuwa of Disaster Mitigation Research Building of Nagoya University,and the dissemination of experiences and lessons learned in the disaster at theDisaster Reduction and Human Renovation in Kobe.
Also, we saw the challenge to the impossible by using
technology in the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering
Research Center (E-Defense), and the respect for thepast and the contribution to the present in the temples
Ninna-Ji and Kunkaku-Ji. Furthermore, we could
observe admirable and exquisite work of architects,engineers and builders in Kajima Corporation.
Through those above things, I realized that theeducation and willpower of human beings (such as Japanese people) to dothings in a proper fashion make such a strong nation which is resilient to thenatural phenomena and man-made disasters.
I would like to express my deep appreciation to JICA, BRI/IISEE for theimmense and generous opportunity to know and visit these places.

Colloquium, General Meeting & Friendship Party
By Mr. Takashi Yamashita, Head of IISEE Administration Division
The third colloquium, which is a seminar consists of presentations by thetraining participants, took place in IISEE for two days on Thursday, May 28 andon Friday, May 29. On the first day the participants of the Earthquake
Engineering Course presented the outline of their individual study reports, andon the following day the participants of Seismology Course and Tsunami
Disaster Mitigation Course followed suit.
On Friday, May 29 after the colloquium, we had the general meeting. In thegeneral meeting, they expressed their impressions and remarks on thelectures, everyday lives, etc.

Back Numbers
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Following the meeting, we held the Friendship Party, which was organized byIISEE for the participants to get over the tough individual studies. I acted as amaster of ceremonies and Dr. Yokoi, IISEE director, gave words of cheer to theparticipants. This year, almost half of the participants study outside of BRI
under their supervisors in Sendai, Tokyo, Chiba, Toyohashi and Kyoto. With agood meal and a comfortable atmosphere the party was closed with “IpponJime” (Japanese style closing of the ceremony with one-time clap altogether).
From June 1, the participants are now working on their individual studies towrite their master’s theses.