Disaster management planning requires an understanding of the issues facing a mixed cultural society to ensure effective risk information/ communication. Irrespective of the length or status of abode in the migrant destination, international standards require timely and effective communication of emergency disaster information to all. Therefore, if disaster managers are to effectively meet this challenge, models and tools must be developed to ensure efficient and equitable dissemination of information to all residents, at all phases of the disaster management cycle. We developed an information simulation model for ensuring effective dissemination of disaster information in a mixed cultural society in order to ensure effective disaster management.
The model will be an effective tool for:
(1) Communicating disaster risk and evacuation information in a mixed cultural landscape.
(2) Planning disaster risk and evacuation response.
(3) Educating decision makers on the relationship between disaster risk, information timing, and response time.

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Identifying and overcoming various bottlenecks of disaster risk communication is considered an essential problem for the betterment of disaster early warning and quick response. In this paper, a systematic method of formalizing and analyzing these bottlenecks is proposed. Two typhoon disasters are focused on and field surveys are conducted. Several conceptual models have been proposed. The C-E-D model can be used to analyze the bottlenecks of information processing within one agent. It can also be extended to analyze inter-organizational information problems among different agents and organizations. To explicitly examine information-sharing devices for the different agents involved, the proposed hierarchical and sharing model can be used. The three-layer risk communication model associated with the pagoda model helps us position the level of bottlenecks in disaster risk communication. Policy implications are also derived from the proposed approach. Our methodological approach (if further improved) will also serve to systematically guide field investigations during and after a particular disaster if we intend to analyze a diverse spectrum of disaster risk communication problems.

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In Japan, slope disasters occur due to earthquakes, abnormal weather and inappropriate land development. It is important to identify safe and economical countermeasures against rockfall disasters. We developed a simple, long-lasting and low-cost structure with maximum impact dissipative action when stopping rockfall. In order to simulate rockfall impact, various energies of falling rocks were made to collide with real-scale protection structures. The new type of protection wall against rockfall using a ductile cast iron panel is an efficient barrier and has an effective dissipative function. It also has very good permeability. The structure is flexible and the design and construction can take into account of the natural environment and topographic features.

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The Snow and Ice Research Center (SIRC) of the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) of Japan has been developing a snow disaster forecasting system. This system consists of an atmospheric mesoscale model NHM, the numerical snow cover model SNOWPACK, and three diagnostic models of snow disasters. In this paper, the performance of NHM and SNOWPACK is investigated in the Niigata area, selecting the events of December 2005 as the case for the experiment. NHM reproduces precipitation events but tends to underestimate the amount of precipitation. This is because the positions of snow clouds are not precisely reproduced in the simulation. The predicted snow depth by SNOWPACK is in a good agreement with the observation. However, the snow type has a large prediction error. A snow cover forecasting experiment with a combination of NHM and SNOWPACK reproduces the observed snow depth and snow density well for 24 hours with slight prediction errors. The snow depth tends to be underestimated when NHM does not suitably reproduce the precipitation. To apply the system to a wet snow region, such as Niigata, accurate predictions of temperature and precipitation are needed.

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The center of typhoon No.13 (Typhoon 0613) in 2006 passed through the Japan Sea and shaved the southwest corner of Yamaguchi Prefecture with characteristics of strong wind and less rainfall in Yamaguchi City. Many ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba L.) trees showed leaf discoloration and defoliation after its hit in Yamaguchi City, Japan. The crown of them can be clearly divided into green part and non-green part so that they were misrecognised as special ornamental trees. In order to quantitatively study this phenomenon, the indices of green coverage ratio of crown (GCRC), crown coverage (CC), vigor index (VI), and so on were used to analyze the vertical sideward profile of ginkgo trees by ground-based digital image analysis. They reflected leaf discoloration and defoliation of the crowns, and positively related to the distance from coastline (DC). Logistic functions between DC and these indices were obtained, with square correlative coefficients being 0.913, 0.622, and 0.882, respectively for GCRC, CC and VI. There is indication that ground-based digital image analysis can be an effective tool used in evaluating the vigor status of ginkgo trees hit by Typhoon 0613. In the paper, combined with analysis of meteorological data, the reason for damage to ginkgo trees was considered as water stress induced by Typhoon 0613. Based on multi-analysis of the research, there were significant differences of vigor status between coast and inland ginkgo trees after hit by Typhoon 0613.

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