Symposium on Facing Disasters: International Disaster Management and Humanitarian Responses

Based on experience from the Great East-Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, the aim of this public symposium held on the 28th July in UCL was to discuss how to build safety systems and resilience against future disasters in the region.

 Scientific views of, and human problems after the disaster were discussed with talks given by representatives of academia, industry and Japanese local government. The symposium keynote lecture was delivered by Prof. Peter Sammonds (Director, UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction). Other speakers included two PhD students from the IRDR, Serena Tagliacozzo and Omar Velazquez Ortiz, who spoke about their experiences visiting the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant and the communications during and after the disaster.  Dr Ilan Kelman also spoke about maternal psychological heath following the disaster. More information about their visit to Japan can be found on the IRDR blog.

Dr Ryo Torii (Mechanical Engineering) has written a summery of the Symposium for the UCL Blog.

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