Usach organized international activity to talk about Tsunami Awareness

In January was held the Webinar “Tsunami Awareness and Evacuation Challenges”, as part of the strengthening of the link between the Engineering Faculty and it´s international partners Tokyo City University and Waseda University, Japan.

The activity, organized by the Department of Mechanical Engineering with the support of the Subdirectorate of International Relations of the Engineering Faculty and the Department of International and Inter-University Relations, counted with the participation of Dr. Takahito Mikami, from Tokyo City University and Dr. Miguel Esteban, from Waseda University, while Dr. Marcela Cruchaga moderated the panel and guided the conversation. The experts discussed tsunami awareness and the current and future challenges of evacuation in this type of natural event.

The webinar began at 7 pm with the presentation of Dr. Miguel Esteban, professor at Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Waseda University, who compared the eruption of the Anak Krakatoa volcano in 1883 with the Sunda Strait Tsunami on december 2018. In his research, the academic concluded that thanks to local history, “awareness about tsunamis is relatively high, though warning systems were not existent. But better evacuation systems are also needed”.

Later on, it was the turn of Dr. Takahito Mikami, professor at Department of Urban and Civil Engineering of Tokyo City University, who compared triggers for Tsunami Evacuation, like environmental phenomena, information and the behavior of people helping people in a tsunami. The academic concluded that there is a relationship between a country's seismic experiences and its levels of preparedness and perception of the population.

“In areas with less past experiences, people were more likely to wait for messages from the authorities to decide to evacuate”, on the other hand, “in areas with more local experience, people evacuated when they felt the ground shaking”, said Takahito Mikami.

In the last part of the activity, the experts talked and responded to the answers of the public.

Watch the webinar below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oltdju3ZNJY&t=4s (insertar)