Regional Disaster Studies (Visiting Professors)

This special section (mainly used by visiting researchers) provides assistance to a nation-wide network of researchers and experts in disaster reduction called the “Natural Disaster Research Council” (“Shizen Saigai Kenkyu Kyogikai”). The section primarily deals with the following: 1) Development of a network of researchers engaged in natural disaster science in Japan. 2) Planning and coordination of rapid post-disaster investigations. 3) Promotion of regional disaster reduction information network projects. As an example, we have developed a text mining system: TRENDREADERTM (TR) that supports reading and understanding of text data, such as interviews, open-ended answers of questionnaire surveys, news reports, and incident response logs, with which we can develop and test theories on human behavior and social response in disaster recovery