Prof.  Kimiro Meguro, Director of ICUS, University of Tokyo gave a talk on Recovering from 2011 Tohoku Earthquake & Tsunami on 11 April at National Academy of Construction, Hyderabad. The talk was jointly organized by National Academy of Construction, Hyderabad; International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad and  Indian Association of Structural Engineers.

The city of Tohoku, in the heart of the ring of fire was jolted by a 9.1 magnitude earthquake on 11 March, 2011. The earthquake was the most powerful ever to hit Japan and the 4th most powerful since 1900 across the world. It moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 2.4 m east, shifted the earth on its axis by estimates of between 10cm and 25cm, and increased the earth’s rotational speed by 1.8 μs per day. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami resulted in massive destruction of life and property, including shutdown of nuclear facilities, forcing the world to re-invent mitigation and contingency response.

Prof Meguro talked about the actions taken to overcome the disaster destruction and future mitigation. As a specialist on non‐structural measures and policy making, he has proposed important social systems and policies for disaster reduction and working on the human evacuation problems during disasters. He is also studying the application of new technologies, virtual reality, GIS/RS and ICT to disaster management and urban safety issues, such as evacuation, fire‐fighting drill, risk assessment, education on disaster, disaster information management, disaster manual, promotion of disaster countermeasures, in developing countries.