Blogs from the Coastal Structures Team - Tohoku, Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 - page 71

Appendix1
Blogs from the Coastal Structures Team
Day1—Wednesday,May11
The Coastal Structures and Coastal Management team will be in Japan from May 10
through May 18, investigating the performance of coastal structures and coastal
management efforts from the March 11 Tohoku Oki earthquake and tsunami. The
team is made up of members from the Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute of
ASCE and from the Ports and Airports Research Institute (PARI) in Japan. The
COPRI team members are Lesley Ewing, P.E., D.CE, M.ASCE, of the California
Coastal Commission; Bryan Jones, P.E., M.ASCE, of the Ocean and Coastal
Consultants of COWI; James Marino, P.E., D.CE, M.ASCE, of Coastal Tech; Ron
Noble, P.E., D.CE, D.PE, M.ASCE, of Noble Consultants; and Dr. Catherine Petroff,
Ph.D, P.E. of LP4 Associates and the University of Washington. The PARI team
members are Drs. Shigeo Takahashi, Tanaka, and Suzuki, and Dr. Kojima of Kyushu
Kyoristu University.
Over the six days in the field, the team will travel from Misawa to Sendai, visiting
fishing ports, harbors, and coastal communities, with a focus on which structures or
natural features provided protection to the inland areas; why certain protective
structures or protective features survived the tsunami with little or no damage, and
why others suffered complete destruction or were not effective in providing any
noticeable level of protection to the inland community.
The Coastal Structures team spent its first full day in Japan attending meetings and
getting to know each other. In the morning, we had the opportunity to meet with
Daniel T. Cox, Ph.D., past director of the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory
at Oregon State University, who had already traveled to the Tohoku area with the
second group of the ASCE 7 survey team. In the afternoon, we attended a seminar
organized by PARI to cover many of the key research findings from the Japanese
researchers who had been examining the effects of the tsunami over the past two
months.
Dr. Cox has been on sabbatical at Kyoto University for the past six months studying
tsunamis with DPRI, a disaster risk management institute. With his home in Oregon,
he spent some time talking about the similarities and dissimilarities between the U.S.
Pacific Northwest and the Tohoku coast. Since the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the
coast of northern California, Oregon, and Washington is the U.S. fault zone most
similar to the source of the Tohoku Oki Earthquake and tsunami, these comparisons
are important to recognize. Both seem to be mountainous coasts with isolated coastal
communities and people place heavy reliance upon fishing. Japan is a country that is
very creative with ways to enjoy seafood and about 50% of the domestic eatable fish
come from the Tohoku area.
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