2014 Volume 16 Issue 2 Pages 18-19
Natural disasters threaten lives and environments that environmental design researchers seek to improve. The twenty-first century has already seen several major and minor disasters. The consequences of these are growing ever more serious as human society is becoming increasingly complex, interconnected, and dependent on new technologies that carry a certain inherent level of risk and uncertainty. The 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami left behind a large number of fatalities. Vulnerability of modern society is also caused by the lack of social interactions in the community. Appropriate research and discussion can yield important lessons for creating safe and resilient society in the future. With these objectives a workshop titled "Towards safe and resilient society against natural disaster" was held at the 44th annual conference of the Environmental Design Research Association held in Providence, Rhode Island in June 2013. This special future is a result of the workshop that discusses different aspects of post disaster recovery that have had problems.
