Reconstruction of Coastal Villages Swept Away by Tsunami by 3D Digital Model

Abstract

The significance of “community” has been evaluated especially following Japan’s 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. To revitalize local Tohoku areas in both creating a resilient city and achieving a sustainable society, community development must center on considering future plans. Feelings of connectedness to a community are fostered by having common values and common experiences acquired and remembered associated with places or landscapes. For people experiencing the Tohoku disaster, however, such places and landscapes will have been totally lost due to the tsunami. We assumed that this loss caused many difficulties in reestablishing a revitalized town, so we started a project in 2013 rebuilding parts destroyed or otherwise changed by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami to offset the loss of landscape where the community sense had been fostered for local people. The sections that follow discuss the 3D reconstruction of six villages using CityEngine, which handles large amounts of data through procedural modeling. Based on interviews with local people, pretsunami aerial photographs, and field surveys of surviving villages, we developed typologies of environmental factor of villages, e.g., typical houses or coastal forest. At workshops using 3D models, residents remembered details and participated actively in the reconstruction project. One resident started a virtual guided tour of the village and spoke of the location of symbolic trees, vending machines, watchtowers, and so on. Through the study it was revealed that once we created this digital archive, it should prove useful in preserving the memories of residents and, thereby, in further regional planning based on community sense.