Established in 2010 as an integrated research program for disaster risk reduction, the IRDR ICoE Taipei is co-sponsored by the International Science Council (ISC) and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). In the past decade, the IRDR ICoE Taipei has received hundreds of participants around the world to the more than a dozen international training workshops (AI, Advanced Institute) it has organized. These workshops focused mostly on the capacity building program for disaster risk reduction. Bearing this in mind, one important motivation for this Special Issue was to encourage the participants of each Advanced Institute, in particular those who were awarded Seed Grants to conduct one-year projects following each workshop, to publish the results of their studies on the topics related to disaster risk reduction.

In this Special Issue, the first paper provides a brief review of the capacity building program of the IRDR ICoE Taipei, followed by three research articles. Viola van Onselen and her co-workers in Taiwan present a methodology of strategies of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction, with several case studies in coastal environments of Taiwan. Shyamli Singh of India proposes an integrated system for sustainable rice economics linking from farm to market, a case study on one of the largest rice production fields on the Indo-Gangetic plain. From the engineering perspective, Wen-Yi Huang and his colleagues in Taiwan and Australia present a paper dealing with the reinforcement of soil walls to prevent geohazards on the roads.

This is the first special issue produced as a collaboration between the IRDR ICoE Taipei and the JDR, with great support from the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) and Academia Sinica of Taiwan. We hope there will be more Special Issues to come in the next few years.

This paper provides a review of the capacity-building program of the Integrated Research for Disaster Reduction International Centre of Excellence at Taipei (IRDR ICoE Taipei) for disaster risk reduction (DRR) since 2011. We present the reasoning, motivation, organizing philosophy, and framework on why and how we have created and run this program, before illustrating its content, including workshop or training course (i.e., Advanced Institute (AI)), seed grant project, follow-up special session of conferences, special issue for publication, and online Master Forum series during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also highlight the efforts, notable results, and achievements of the ICoE Taipei on its long-term capacity-building program on DRR, including 14 in-person (in and outside of Taiwan) and 4 online AIs and 31 seed grant projects in 2011–2022.

Taiwan’s rapid economic and industrial growth has put enormous pressure on its natural environment. This is especially visible in the coastal zone, where risks such as sea-level rise, coastal erosion, land subsidence, and flooding threaten the already vulnerable ecosystems. Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (Eco-DRR) is a management strategy that uses ecosystems to reduce disaster risks. While this type of strategy is promoted in the ‘Taiwan Coastal Zone Management Act’ (TCZMA), there is still a lack of data on the implementation of Eco-DRR methods in Taiwan. This study examines papers on policy analyses of the TCZMA, and five main barriers for implementation of Eco-DRR in Taiwan are identified. Subsequently, in order to assess Eco-DRR strategies in the coastal zone of Taiwan, case studies and evaluation data on ecosystem-based management strategies were assembled and evaluated. The results of this study show that initial strategies to plant mangroves for reduction of wave energy have not always been successful; in certain areas they were removed again due to invasiveness in endemic wetland ecosystems. Moreover, artificially building sand dunes can have negative side effects, like oversteepening of the dune profile or deteriorating the natural dune dynamics. To address and tackle aforementioned challenges, a novel framework is introduced for improved uptake of Eco-DRR in Taiwan and beyond, and suggestions for future strategies are proposed.

The Indo-Gangetic plains are considered to be the most fertile land area within India. It contains alluvium type of soil which is rich in nutrients and have high water retention capacity. According to many agricultural think tanks, including Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the northern belt of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Bihar are the only states having naturally sustainable soil conditions for the cultivation of water-intensive rice crops in India and are also among very few regions of Asia. This paper will be an attempt to propose an integrated system where Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets like poverty, well-being, economic growth, innovation and infrastructure, and sustainable communities will be addressed. With the optimum production of rice in the region and with the support of government schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampda Yojana scheme for overall growth and development of food processing units, food processing industries can be established in selected pockets of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The food processing industries based on rice processing will produce varied local sweets such as Anarsa, Lakhtho, Thekua, etc., and food products that can get a vital push from the government’s One District One Product (ODOP) scheme. With the help of the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), the products can be promoted for international exports as well. Also, it will address the much-known menace of outmigration (4–5 million of workforce per annum) from states and will provide local human capital with income growth and identity. A whole integrated system can be built where linkages from farm to market can be created which will reap farmers: good prices and regular procurement, food industries: good promotion of products plus profits, and local people: economic and social protection. Therefore, by using locally climate suited crop and government supported food parks or industrial system, the holistic aim of 3P’s – people, planet, and profit, will be realized.

In recent years, the working performance of mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls has shown their outstanding stability and capacity to accommodate large deformation. The behavior and failure mechanisms of conventional MSE walls have been carefully examined. In cases where space is limited, such as in mountainous regions, in coastal regions, and for road expansion, the conventional MSE wall can be modified by adjusting the length of reinforcement to conform the construction area. For narrow geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) wall, the modification and arrangement of reinforcement components, including reinforcement tensile strength, vertical spacing, and aspect ratio, play key roles in the behavior of reinforced earth walls and can also lead to differences in the distribution of lateral earth pressure compared with conventional MSE walls. In this study, a series of geotechnical centrifuge tests are conducted to clarify the failure behaviors, distribution of lateral earth pressure, and deformation progresses of narrow GRS walls. Among the investigated variants, it is verified that improved reinforcement strength leads to a significant decrease in horizontal wall displacement. The relationship among lateral earth pressure, zero-earth-pressure zone, and horizontal displacement can be applied to predict the deformation of a narrow GRS wall.

We are very pleased to publish this Special Issue, NIED Frontier Research on Science and Technology for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience 2023, which includes three papers and one tutorial.

The first paper, authored by Dhakal and Kunugi, presents the orientation changes that earthquake movements have caused in the accelerometers of a seafloor observation network for earthquakes and tsunamis along the Japan Trench (S-net). This study is expected to contribute to more accurate analyses of S-net data. The second and third papers are reports of research done on volcanoes. The paper by Tanada and Ueda presents the seismic activity of the Nasudake volcano through the use of NIED hypocenter data gathered from 1998 to 2022. Tanada and Ueda state that earthquakes have regularly occurred near the Chausudake lava dome and two craters and that, from the volcano disaster-prevention point of view, it is important to monitor the relationship between this seismic area and volcanic activity. The third paper, by Miyagi et al., reports on an experiment aimed at grasping the movement of climbers and sharing the level of disaster threat with climber-related organizations in real time. Their online visualization system for the movement of climbers helps to provide solutions to problems related to volcanic disaster prevention not only during disaster events but also in the periods between. The last paper is a tutorial by Hanashima and Usuda on “SIP4D-ZIP,” which is a standard for synthesizing and sharing common information from multiple organizations. This tutorial explains how to realize a versatile and automatic mutual data sharing and usage system for various kinds of necessary disaster information.

In conjunction with the fourth 7-year mid/long term plan period 2016-2022, NIED has published seven special issues since 2017, including this 2023 issue. We believe that the articles in these seven issues can contribute to the advancement of science and technology for disaster risk reduction and resilience.

S-net is a large-scale seafloor observation network for earthquakes and tsunamis around the Japan Trench, consisting of 150 observatories equipped with seismometers and pressure gauges. The sensors have been set up inside cylindrical pressure vessels, which have been buried in the shallow-water regions (water depth <1,500 m), while the vessels have been laid freely on the seafloor in the deeper-water regions. Previous studies showed that the cylindrical pressure vessels rotate during strong shakings due to poor coupling with the seabed sediments, thus making it difficult to retrieve the actual ground motions. We investigated the static changes in the orientations of S-net accelerometers due to shakings from 1,878 earthquakes of Mj greater than 4 that occurred around the network, and found that rotations as large values as 16° were observed during the 2022, Mj 7.4, off-Fukushima Prefecture earthquake. We estimated the threshold acceleration levels after which the sensors are likely to rotate at all S-net stations separately and found that the threshold values lie mostly between 5 and 50 cm/s². Finally, we discussed the observed peak accelerations and velocities at the S-net stations with those recorded on land, where high-quality records were obtained, during the 2022, Mj 7.4 earthquake, which was also the largest magnitude earthquake to occur in the region after the network commenced operation. The results presented herein complement several previous studies and form the basis for more comprehensive future investigations.

The seismic activity of the Nasudake volcano is summarized based on hypocenter data from the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED). The observation period spans 24 years, from October 1998 to December 2022, and the number of earthquakes during the period is 12,064. Of these, 80.1% occurred between depths of 0.7 and 2.6 km; 94% registered between -1.6 and 0.9 on the Richter scale. The lower limit of the detectable magnitude (magnitude of completeness, Mc) for the transition of the volcano-observation system was examined and found to be -0.5 for Mc before 2005 and -1.4 for Mc after 2012. Focusing on zones where seismic activity was concentrated, we divided the active zones into four areas. The greatest concentration of seismic activity, 76.4% of the total number of earthquakes, was between Chausu-dake and Asahi-dake. The depth of the earthquakes in this active area was shallower than 2 km, and most were micro-earthquakes (1 ≤ M < 3) or smaller. Earthquakes have been occurring regularly for 24 years. This active area includes the Chausu-dake lava dome formed by activities in 1408–1410 and two craters where phreatic eruptions have occurred since the Meiji era (1868–1912). Therefore, in considering volcano disaster-prevention measures, the relationship between this seismic area and volcanic activity should continue to be closely monitored.

We carry out experiments to grasp the movement of climbers as well as an experiment to share the disaster situation with related organizations in real time, at Nasudake in 2020 and Ontakesan in 2022. In the experiments, small beacons are distributed to many climbers, and their movements are detected by receivers installed on mountain trails in advance. We build an online viewer to visualize the monitoring results on a web map in real time, and share them with the related organizations, and exchange opinions with them about the use of the acquired data for disaster prevention. Based on the results of the experiments, we consider how to solve problems related to volcanic disaster prevention. It is shown that the systems used in the experiments leads to solutions to problems related to volcanic disaster prevention during not only disasters but also normal times, such as updating drills and revising evacuation plans.

“SIP4D-ZIP,” developed by the authors, is a common data framework for sharing disaster information among systems operated by different organizations. In past large-scale disaster responses, it has often been necessary to share information that could not be predicted in advance with several organizations. Even if such information could be converted into electronic data, the valuable information was sometimes not fully utilized due to the lack of a common format for describing the meaning of the data or lack of the data format that can be read by different systems. To solve such problems, we developed SIP4D-ZIP as a common data framework that enables data to be exchanged between systems without prior arrangement. We demonstrate how SIP4D-ZIP can solve the problems found in actual disaster response, which are the background of the design concept of SIP4D. Furthermore, we explain in detail how SIP4D-ZIP works and show that it can automate the processes required to share information between systems. We believe that designing both the information source system and the utilization system based on SIP4D-ZIP will enable highly versatile and automatic mutual sharing of disaster information and promote digital transformation in disaster response.

This paper presents the results of a cross-sectional study on adolescents’ behavioral and emotional reactions during and immediately after the 2017 Puebla earthquake that occurred in Mexico City. Convenience sampling was used to achieve a sample size of n=362. Some of the key findings are as follows: a) some 57.0% of adolescent women and over 60.0% of men “ran out of the building” during the earthquake; only 17.4% of women and 14.2% of men took shelter. Early and late adolescent women were significantly associated with building “evacuation” immediately after the earthquake. b) Early and late adolescent men were “surprised” by the earthquake occurrence. c) The perceived vulnerability of the city (PVC) was significantly associated with men but not with women. d) Adolescents exhibited strong information-seeking behavior regarding seismic risk. The results of the study highlight a lack of adolescents’ preparedness for earthquakes in terms of the protective actions taken during the ground shaking and knowledge of the functioning of the Mexican seismic alert system. An educational program aimed at better educating and preparing adolescents for a seismic emergency should be implemented in preparatory schools.

This study focuses on how the Uzbek public perceives the Aral Sea disaster, the role of the government, the UN, and other agencies, and their overall attitude toward the future of the region. This research is based on an online survey of 599 people across Uzbekistan. The results show that the participants are largely supportive of government and optimistic for the future of the Aral Sea region, despite also being concerned for its environment. The role of traditional and social media plays a crucial role in informing and shaping people’s opinions. A sense of inclusion and representation within the decision-making process led to increased government support amongst the attitudes of the participants.

Owing to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many companies experienced a sharp and significant decline in sales, resulting in a major crisis. This study proposes a method for estimating the risk of a sudden and significant decline in sales to tackle the aforementioned issue. The method is based on the distributional characteristics calculated from historical data of companies mainly in the transportation industry, which are vulnerable to disasters, using the damage caused by COVID-19 as a lesson. Furthermore, we conduct an empirical analysis using the proposed stochastic model for the case of the All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd. (ANA), a major Japanese airline company. The results are as follows: (1) the sales change rates are normally distributed before COVID-19, but inclusion of post-COVID-19 data produced asymmetric distribution of sales change rates; (2) the proposed statistic is log-normally distributed (including post-COVID-19 data) for a time interval of two or three years; (3) the probability of actual sales decline was estimated to be between 0.1% and 1.6% in fiscal year (FY) 2020 and FY2021 post-COVID-19; (4) the estimated risk of future sales decline is well-grounded in light of past actual values.

In South Sulawesi, the development of irrigation may be hindered by the continuing limitations and inadequacies of hydrological data. It is well known that the rainfall monitoring station is more extensive than the river flow monitoring station. Therefore, the Malino Catchment Area was selected to illustrate the theory of four tank components. The 1st tank (tank A) has two horizontal outlets (Q_a1 and Q_a2) and one vertical outlet (I_a); the 2nd tank (tank B) has one horizontal outlet (Q_b) and one vertical outlet (I_b); the 3rd tank (tank C) has the same conceptual structure as tanks A and B; and the 4th tank (tank D) has only one horizontal outlet (Q_d). To ensure that the tank model represents vertical and horizontal flows in a watershed region, the flows (Q_a1, Q_a2, Q_b, Q_c, and Q_d) are predicted to accumulate in one flow, more or less, and must equal the measured discharge (Q_o) at the specified time. Rainfall and evapotranspiration data are required to calculate this model. The 264.55 km² (25902 ha) research area has an elevation range of 400–2400 masl. The findings for land use are dominated by plantations (41.01%), forests (40.79%), rice fields (15.44%), and residential areas (0.96%). In the calibration of the tank model, R² is evaluated at 0.560% (good) and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency is evaluated at 0.526% (good) to ensure that the model can represent the distribution of water flow components. Additionally, the measurements for the total water flow (Q_total) were 13702 m³/y with a total rainfall of 3996 mm/y. Furthermore, surface flow accounts for 77.26% of the total runoff water, while intermediate flow accounts for 20.25%.