2020. 1. 14

Japan Society of Civil Engineers
International Activities Center

IAC News No.87
New Year’s Greetings“Start a New Chapter in Civil Engineering”
Happy New Year. I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous year ahead and the bestof luck with your resolutions.
Looking back the past year, we experienced more heavy rainfalls and winds than ever,causing serious damages linked to climate change. Heavy rains with an hourly-rainfallof over 100 mm, which set a record-breaking, hit the northern Kyushu area in August
and caused inundation and floods around that area. Then, Typhoon No. 15 hammered
the Chiba area in September, where the maximum 57.5m/s wind speed was recorded,

Yasuo Hayashi

leaving considerable damages to the area’s lifelines such as electric power lines and (107th JSCE President)
water supply, and in the following month, the powerful Typhoon No. 19 made unprecedented rains and floodsin the Kanto, Koshinetsu amd Tohoku areas, impacting on human lives, people’s everyday lives, houses andproperties, and even economic activities.
We have experienced numerous natural disasters after the Great Hansin-Awaji Earthquake. Looking at the media
reports covering increased risks of natural disasters, I have noticed that their reports often explain naturaldisasters with the expressions “record-breaking,” “historic levels,” and “unprecedented.” I can’t help having
anxiety and fears about the society being vulnerable to natural disasters which we are living in. While I one ofcivil engineers have made great efforts to build strong and long-lasting structures, I have come to realize that wecivil engineers are facing a new and difficult challenge and need to develop approaches, skills and technologies
to deal with it. We, taking into account river basin management and protection, have to strengthen not only hard
structural measures such as levees and dykes, but also soft non-structural measures such as evacuation plans anddrills and land-use plans. We shall more communicate with the central and regional governments and the citizens,and coordinate and integrate them in order to effectively and successfully overcome the challenge.
A safe and secure society is what any member of society wishes for at any given time. Realizing their hope isplaced on the top priority of JSCE’s agenda. The JSCE will consider discuss essential approaches and measures
to respond to future heavy rainfall events and floods likely caused by climate change with Ministry of Land,
Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and make proper proposals to build the society for which people wish.
Olympic Games 2020 to be held in Tokyo in July 2020 attracts global attention. Right after Tokyo was chosen
as the host city of the games, it has received inquiries and requests from overseas about tours to the Olympicvenues and facilities. The construction of venues, facilities and related infrastructures around the host city havemade good progress to be ready for visitors in and outside the country by then. The central government targets
1increasing inbound tourists to 60 million in 2030. Focusing on the Olympic Games as a mid-term goal, it has
taken steps to boost travel demand to Japan, and requests the host and neighboring cities to develop theirinfrastructures and facilities to meet the inbound tourism; creating attractive urban areas with transportation hubs
such as airports and railway stations and designing and establishing new transportation systems for example
Mobility as a Service (MaaS) may be some options. When visiting another country, you may find interesting
beautiful, unique infrastructures. For instance, a station of the Kaohsiung Mass Rapid Transit (KMRT) Linesfeatures the Dome of Light made with beautiful stain glass, and the dome attracts many visitors from inside,outside the city and even overseas every day. We will build the high-quality infrastructures which people care
willing to drop by and use with safe, convenient and comfortable feelings.
Then, looking outside, we notice that each country has its own ideas and ways to infrastructure development:
some countries address the same issues and challenges as we do, and some innovate the whole new approaches,
methods and technologies which we like to learn from them. We will strengthen communication and information
with our overseas counterparts in order to broaden our perspective and acquire new approaches, and then address
various issues and challenges timely and effectively utilizing what we have acquired.
On behalf of the JSCE, I sincerely thank you for your continued support and cooperation and are looking forward
to working with you to achieve goals.

The 3rd Engineers’ Lounge “DOBOKU”
The Professional Development and Education Program Group of the JSCE International
Activities Center holds Engineers’ Lounge “DOBOKU” program on a regular basis. This
program invites professional engineers, performing brilliantly in overseas projects, as
instructors for promising young engineers who intend to perform on the global stage.
The instructors share, with fledgling engineers, a wide variety of issues, ranging fromdetailed overseas project experiences and obstacles to meaningful overseas tasks,
challenging issues, future prospects and valuable messages to budding engineers, andKoichiro Shibazaki

also have an opportunity to have open discussions.

（PACIFIC CONSULTANTS
CO., LTD.）At the 3rd round of “DOBOKU,” on September 24, 2019, we invited Messrs. Hiroshi
Shimada and Isao Namikawa from PACIFIC CONSULTANTS CO., LTD. They delivered lectures on a railway
project in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar as one of theirvaluable experiences.
In this session held in the late-summer heat, around 15
participants enjoyed the lounge session over canned beer, otherbeverages, and snacks in a cozy atmosphere.
Mr. Shimada delivered a speech on “project for weak ground andvibration measures with sandbags in the area along the railway.”
He touched upon the project overview and described the onsite,
2

Mr. Namikawa (left) and Mr. Shimada (right)

flooded weak ground status and features, which were difficult to install heavy equipment, using video footage
introducing sandbag technologies for weak ground measures. He also gave the attendees the construction method
and the pre- and post-construction comparison together with future challenges. Furthermore, he explained
various experiences, covering construction troubles or injury accidents, slope failure in the earth filling portion
brought by torrential rain in the rainy season after the construction, KY activity (KY stands for “Kiken Yochi,”meaning risk prediction in Japanese) for Myanmar workers every morning and hardships at the site. In the Q&Asession, he showed the participants the same sandbag structure as that used on-site, providing fruitful information.
Meanwhile, Mr. Namikawa made a presentation about “projectfor railway improvement between Yangon and Mandalay.” Heoutlined the project, the status of obsolete bridges the riverconditions in the rainy season and detailed design works. He
also mentioned that the bridges were seriously dilapidated
beyond what we assumed in the Japanese maintenance system
and gave firsthand on-site experiences, covering railway earth
filling and the railway bridges damaged by bursted dam. He
also talked about technology in detail and the knowledge andMr. Shimada Introduces “D・BOX”

lessons gained from this project on operational and individuallevels, and introduced daily lives, entertainment and tourist
destinations during the project period in the country, supplying
the novice engineers access to valuable information.
I believe that the Engineers’ Lounge “DOBOKU” offers aprecious opportunity for up-and-coming engineers to directly
gain meaningful, attractive overseas project experiences fromthe expert. As it is considered that the “DOBOKU” will beorganized on a regular basis, I hope that this program will beParticipants Enjoy the Discussion.

more meaningful through a trial and error process in the course of a series of sessions.
【Report by Koichiro Shibazaki (Professional Development and Education Program Group, IAC)】The 3rd ACF Symposium on Assessment
and Intervention of Existing Structures
The 3rd ACF Symposium on Assessment and Intervention of Existing Structures was held at Hokkaido
University in Sapporo, Japan, from September 10-11, 2019. The Asian Concrete Federation (ACF) and Japan
Concrete Institute (JCI) were co-organizer of the symposium, and JSCE sponsored this.
ACF has held international conferences every 2 years in various Asian countries since its establishment in 2004.
Since 2015, "ACF Symposium" has been organized in alternate years to the ACF Conference. The 1st ACF
Symposium on Ultra High Performance Concrete was held in Kolkata, India on October 7, 2015, and the 2ndACF Symposium on Innovations for Sustainable Concrete Infrastructures was in Chiang Mai, Thailand on3

November 23-25, 2017.
The main theme of the 3rd ACF Symposium was "Assessment and Intervention of Existing Structures."
Nowadays, inspection, monitoring, evaluation, prediction, maintenance and intervention, and optimal life cycle
management were given the focus of intensive research and technical development and implementation.
114 papers from 14 countries were submitted, and participants discussed in 16 sessions (Table 1 and 2).

Table 1 Session ThemeTable 2 Participating Countries

And 6 professors gave keynote lectures (Table 3).

Table 3 Keynote Lectures

As a part of the Symposium, the Professor Tamon Ueda Session was held to honor his accomplishments in thefield of maintenance and repair. He is also one of the founders of ACF and International Committee on Concrete
Model Code for Asia (ICCMC), and has made a significant contribution to the expansion of ACF activities.
Many participants engaged themselves in vigoropsly discpssion in each session for two days. The
winners of the best papers award were annopnced and honored at the closing session (Table 4).

4

Table 4 Best Paper Award

The symposipm ended spccessfplly. We hope that this symposipm will help to enhance themaintenance engineering on concrete strpctpres in Asian copntries.
* This report cited some parts from 3rd ACF symposipm website.
http://www.eng.hokpdai.ac.jp/acf2019/index.htm

Lecture by Prof. Tamon Ueda

All Participants Come to the Outside【Report by Ryosuke Takahashi (Akita University)】

The Conference of Taiwan Bridges Managementand Real Time Monitoring
A Brief History of Taiwan Bridges Management and Real Time Monitoring:
From 921 Chi Chi Earthquake to 88 Typhoon
Following the fall of the bridge in Nanfangao in eastern Taiwan on 30th September 2019,
the Ministry of Transportation in Taiwan asked the Chinese Institute of Civil andHydraulic Engineering (hereinafter referred to as “CICHE”) its accident survey andrequested to hold a conference for local road managers to raise awareness on the current
status and issues of bridge maintenance. On conferencing, CICHE made a request to theJapan Society of Civil Engineers (hereinafter referred to as “JSCE”) to provide a topic
on the current situation of disaster prevention and maintenance for bridges in Japan. To
meet this requirement, I participated in this conference.

Yoshiyuki Yasukawa（East Nippon ExpresswayCompany Limited）

This conference was held at International Conference Hall, Chang-Yung Fa Foundationin Taipei city, on 15th November, and there were about 300 participants (half are engineers and half are localadministrators). Although the survey is still now in operation, the theme of this conference was based on thepresent bridge managements apparently different from past natural disasters, and presenters introduced several
problems and their measurements working on now, such as the inspection using UAV technology, bridge healthmonitoring system and bridge disaster management platform with ICT and AI. From this conference, I found5

that this situation is almost same in Japan and they have strong awareness for risk in bridge present condition.
Prior to the conference, I made a courtesy call and had a brief discussion with the Ministry of Transportation,
the promoter, and the largest construction consultant company, CECI, one of the sponsors, and I saw streets andstructures through the window on my way to destinations by car. This precious experience has widened myknowledge as well as the participation in the conference.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Ministry of Transportation, CICHE and JSCE International
Activities Center for giving precious opportunity to participate this conference and to get to know many
distinguished Taiwanese engineers.
*For the full report, please visit the website: http://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai0901/node/11

Visit to Ministry of Transportation with CICHE
Executives.

Mr. Wang of CICHE President Opens theconference.

【Report by Yoshiyuki Yasukawa (Committee on Structural Engineering)】

Updates◆Up-coming Events・Japanese Civil Engineers the Global Leaders Symposium Series No.15 (February 5, 2020)
http://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/node/157◆Half Day Workshop on Maintenance of Concrete Structures –Durability Assessment, New NDT Method
Introduction, AI & i-Construction Application in Japan(14:00-17:30, March 5, 2020＠Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)https://www.facebook.com/JSCE.en/posts/3193826163980080◆One Day Seminar on Assessment of Thermal Cracking in Mass-Concrete(9:00-17:40, March 6, 2020＠Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)https://www.facebook.com/JSCE.en/posts/3193843887311641◆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/◆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. 105, No.1, January 2019http://www.jsce-int.org/pub/magazine

6◆Journal of JSCE
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