Abstract

Tohoku earthquake and tsunami which occurred two years ago, on March 11 2011, had significant impact on our society.  Especially, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident had a strong impact. The word “beyond our expectation” had been used repeatedly to discuss the accident, because possibility for occurrence of magnitude 9 earthquake was not explicitly recognized before 2011.  We engineers, however, are expected to deal with such beyond-design events, when designing and operating engineering systems.

After the investigation of the root causes of the damages due to the earthquake and tsunami, comprehensive risk assessment and management have increased the need in order to deal with such beyond-design events. In this lecture, the basic concept of risk is introduced in this context.  First, the characteristics of the Tohoku earthquake and the damages of infrastructures including nuclear power plants are presented.  Then, safety consideration before 2011 is briefly discussed from the viewpoint of earthquake risk management, aging management and nuclear safety management.  Finally, lessons learned from the Tohoku earthquake and the need to shift from a current engineering discipline to a new one are discussed by introducing a new discipline called “resilience engineering”.

CV
University Education:
March 1999  The University of Tokyo
   B. Eng. Architecture
March 2001  The University of Tokyo
   M. Eng. Architecture
(Wind Engineering)
March 2004  The University of Tokyo
   Dr. Eng. Architecture
(Wind Engineering, Reliability Engineering)

Professional Experiences:
April 2004-August 2009 Research Engineer of Taisei Corporation
September 2009-March 2012 Project Assistant Professor of The University of Tokyo, Japan (Department of Architecture)
April 2012-present  Associate Professor of The University of Tokyo, Japan (Department of Nuclear Engineering and Management)

Awards:
 Japan Association for Wind Engineering Award (Incentive Award for Young Researcher), 2005

Membership of Professional Societies:
 Architectural Institute of Japan
 Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering
 Atomic Energy Society of Japan
 Seismological Society of Japan
 Japan Association for Wind Engineering
 The Society for Risk Analysis Japan

Current Research Interests:
 Probabilistic seismic hazard and risk analysis
 Engineering decision making under uncertainty
 Ground motion prediction model and ground motion simulation

itoi@n.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp