RAPID: The Role of Urban Development Patterns in Mitigating the Effects of Tsunami Run-up

这个快速反应研究赠款项目旨在了解城市发展模式与大范围海啸造成的物理破坏程度之间的关系。2011年3月11日发生在日本东北地区的地震给日本东北部沿海地区造成了严重破坏。为了了解建筑环境如何在海啸中影响社区的表现，该项目将研究宫城县/千叶县/茨城县的至少9个社区，这些地区的破坏程度从轻微到中度到完全破坏。研究的核心问题是：一个社区的城市拓扑结构能否通过将更具破坏性的浪涌效应隔离到一些设计良好、位置合理的建筑物上，从而将对受保护建筑物的破坏限制在上升的水效应上，从而减轻海啸的影响？本研究的主要目标是：1)进行实地研究，收集东北地震后沿海社区绩效的易腐数据；2)了解地震后日本的数据景观；3)初步了解城市发展模式在减轻或加剧海啸影响方面所起的作用。该项目将收集新的资料，系统和全面地评估城市发展模式对减轻或加剧海啸影响的影响。这种资料将补充目前的研究，这些研究只注重个别结构的表现，即不注重社区的表现。这些信息还可以通过记录日本沿海代表性社区的初始破坏状态，为日本长期恢复的任何未来研究提供重要的参考点。除了数据收集之外，该项目还将探索使用分布式视觉分析和人群外包以及高分辨率航空和卫星图像进行快速损害评估的新方法；这些方法在不可能立即进入现场或破坏广泛的情况下（如东北地震）是至关重要的。此外，通过引入基于社区的参数，本研究中获得的知识将有助于为未来的海啸损失建模活动提供信息，这些参数可以增强或加剧地震的直接影响。这项研究的结果还将强化这样一种观念，即应该在社区层面上看待恢复力，以尽量减少大灾害的社会经济影响。从这项研究中获得的知识将有助于改善许多沿海地区的区域防备计划，包括在东北地震中遭受重大破坏的美国西海岸。

This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project seeks to understand the relationship between urban development patterns and the extent of physical damage caused by widespread tsunami run up. The 11 March 2011 Tohoku, Japan earthquake caused significant damage all along the northeastern coast of Japan. In order to understand how the built environment can affect the performance of communities in a tsunami, the project will study at least nine communities in the Miyagi/Chiba/Ibaraki Prefectures ¨C areas ranging from minor to moderate damage to complete devastation. The central research question is: Can the urban topology of a community mitigate the effects of a tsunami by isolating the more damaging surge effects to a few well designed and well placed buildings, thus limiting damage to protected buildings to just rising water effects. The main objectives of this study are: 1) to perform field studies to collect perishable data on coastal community performance following the Tohoku earthquake, 2) to develop an understanding of the data landscape in post earthquake Japan, and 3) to develop a preliminary understanding of the role that urban development patterns played in either mitigating or exacerbating tsunami induced impacts.This project will gather new information to systematically and comprehensively assess the effect that urban development patterns have in mitigating or exacerbating the effects of tsunamis. Such information would complement current studies that focus only on the performance of individual structures, i.e., not on the performance of communities. This information can also provide an important reference point for any future studies on long term recovery in Japan by documenting the initial damage states of representative communities along the coast of Japan. In addition to data collection, this project will explore new methods of performing rapid damage assessment using distributed visual analytics and crowd sourcing, and high resolution aerial and satellite imagery; these methods can be vital in situations where immediate field access is not possible or damage is widespread (as was the case in the Tohoku earthquake). Furthermore, the knowledge gained in this study will help to inform future tsunami loss modeling activities by introducing community based parameters that can either enhance or exacerbate the direct effects of an earthquake. The results of this study will also enforce the notion that resilience should be viewed at a community level in order to minimize the socioeconomic impacts of large disasters. The knowledge gained from this study will help to improve regional preparedness plans for many coastal areas, including the west coast of the United States, which also experienced significant damage in the Tohoku earthquake.