The TSUNAMI symposium

The SOI (School of Internet) Asia Special Symposium entitled “Tsunami：Lessons Learned and Universities’ Role” was held at the East building G-SEC Lab (Mita campus) on February 24th. Report of devastated condition and discussion were carried through internet hookups among the SOI Asia members from Japan, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia.

The SOI Asia Project (representative: professor Jun Murai, Faculty of Environmental Information, Keio University) started in 2001 with a common internet infrastructure using satellite multicast in order to contribute to higher education development in Asian countries. Currently, 17 institutes from 11 countries are participating to this project and many regions where those institutes are situated were hit by the Tsunami. This attempt is to discuss and share various research and case studies among Asia using the Internet channel and human network on account of future disaster prevention and restoration measures.

In symposium, Tohoku University presented the principles and peculiarity of the Tsunami resulted by the Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake. Secondly, Keio University introduced the past case of network use in Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. From other Asian institutes, Chulalongkorn University from Thailand and Institute Teknologi Bandung from Indonesia reported the critical devastated condition caused by the Tsunami. Taking those reports into consideration, environmental restoration measures and remote lectures were proposed. Furthermore, additional lectures to learn about Tsunami are considered as an attempt.

By internet relay, participation from the prime minister’s official residence was made possible. This internet measures allowed the attendance of professor Murai, assembly of the government’ IT conference and also enabled to transmit Prime Minister Koizumi’s welcome to the Asian cooperation and his will of contributing to the recovery of Tsunami damage using internet technologies.