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

这一快速反应研究补助金(RAPID)项目旨在了解城市发展模式与大范围海啸造成的物质破坏程度之间的关系。2011年3月11日发生在日本东北海岸的地震对整个日本东北海岸造成重大破坏。为了了解建成环境如何影响社区在海啸中的表现，该项目将研究宫城/千叶县/茨城县的至少九个社区--从轻微到中度破坏到完全破坏的地区。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涌浪影响隔离到少数设计良好、位置良好的建筑来缓解海啸的影响，从而将对受保护建筑的破坏限制在仅仅是洪水上涨的影响上。这项研究的主要目的是：1)进行实地研究，收集东北地震后沿海社区表现的易腐烂数据；2)了解地震后日本的数据情况；3)初步了解城市发展模式在减轻或加剧海啸引发的影响方面所起的作用。该项目将收集新的信息，以系统和全面地评估城市发展模式在减轻或加剧海啸影响方面的效果。这些信息将补充目前只注重个别结构的绩效，即不关注社区的绩效的研究。这些信息还可以通过记录日本沿海具有代表性的社区的初始破坏状态，为今后任何关于日本长期恢复的研究提供重要的参考点。除数据收集外，该项目还将探索利用分布式视觉分析和人群来源以及高分辨率航空和卫星图像进行快速损失评估的新方法；这些方法在无法直接实地访问或破坏广泛的情况下至关重要(如东北地震)。此外，在这项研究中获得的知识将有助于通过引入基于社区的参数来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一概念，即应在社区一级看待复原力，以便最大限度地减少大型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，包括在东北地震中也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.