Fundamental Research for the Mitigation of Urban Disasters by Near-Field Earthquakes

1995年兵库县南部大地震虽然是日本列岛每年发生一次的中等规模地震，但造成6000多人死亡，直接和间接财产损失达200亿美元。巨大灾难的原因是地震发生在像科比这样的城市化和高度发达地区的正下方。正因为如此，科比地震后，研究者们强烈地认识到，应大力推进近场地震及其对技术和社会经济问题的影响研究。基于这一认识，协调员们决定将重点放在三个领域，即内陆活动断层子研究项目、破坏脉冲对结构反应和震后社会经济管理问题的影响。从这三个次级项目中，组织了8个小组作为核心项目，三分之二的赠款用于这一类别。另一类是从核心计划以外的研究提案中选出的个别研究。该研究项目每年通过汇总提交给在不同城市、京都、东京、札幌和科比举行的研讨会的研究论文来发表研究报告。该项目于1999财政年度完成，并于2000年1月28日和29日在台湾台北和旧金山弗朗西斯科举行了工作坊。于2000年3月20日、21日在加州与各自城市的机构举行了联合讲习班。以“应对城市地震”为标题的英文摘要报告已分发给世界有关机构。此外，与本项目有关的研究人员还将编写一本关于地震灾害及其对策的读物，供公众阅读。

1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake killed more than 6000 human lives and the toll of direct and indirect property loss reached to 20 billion US Dollars although the earthquake itself was moderate scale that occurs once a year around Japanese archipelago. The reason of enormous disaster is the fact that the earthquake occurred just beneath the urbanized and highly developed area like Kobe. Because of this reason, it is strongly recognized by researcher after the Kobe earthquake that the research on the near-field earthquake and its effects on technical and socio-economic issues should be intensively promoted.Based on this observation, the coordinators decided to put emphasis on three fields, namely the sub-research project on the inland active faults, effects of killer pulse on structural response and post earthquake managements of socio-economic issues. From these three sub-projects, 8 teams were organized as the core projects and the two third of the grant was spent for this category. Another category was established as the individual research that is selected from research proposals that are not involved in the core program.This research project has published the research report every year by compiling the research papers submitted to the symposium held in different city, Kyoto, Tokyo, Sapporo and Kobe. This project finished in the fiscal year 1999 and the works shops were held in, Taipei, Taiwan on January 28 and 29,2000 and in San Francisco. on March 20,21,2000 California as the joint workshop with the institutions of the respective cities. The summary report in English under the title "Confronting Urban Earthquakes" distributed to the concerning institutions of the world. Moreover a read book on earthquake disasters and its countermeasures for general publics will be written by the researcher concerned with this project.