In November 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) hit the Philippines. It caused heavy loss of lives and extensive damages to buildings and infrastructure. When collapsed buildings are focused on, it is inter-esting to find that these buildings did not collapse for the same reasons after the landfall of the typhoon and storm surge. The objective of this study is to develop a statistical model for building damage due to Super Typhoon Haiyan and its storm surge. The data were collected in collaboration with Tanauan Municipality, the Philippines. The data for the inundation map were ob-tained by field surveys conducted on-site to determine the cause of the damages inferred from satellite data. The maximum wind speed was derived from the Hol-land parametric hurricane model based on the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) typhoon track data and the inundation depth of storm surge was calculated using the MIKE model. Multinomial logistic regression was used to develop a model to identify the significant factors influencing the damage to buildings. The result of this work is expected to be used to prepare urban plans for preventing damage from future storms.

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The world is encountering climate change and severe natural disasters. Floods have been one of the most disruptive disasters these decades. The 2011 flood in Thailand affected 13.6 million people and caused damage of USD 46.5 billion, while the 2013 flood in Jakarta, despite its short period, affected more than 45,000 people. This study intends to examine the changes of disaster information preference before and during each disaster. Questionnaire surveys were conducted in July 2013 in Thailand and Indonesia. The results found that the preferences for information increased once the disaster approached, except for preparedness plans and warnings in both cases and waste disposal in the Indonesian case. While most of the information preferences show no significant difference in mean between the two disasters, the results found significant differences in preferences for traffic/transportation infrastructure both before and during the arrival of disasters, availability of food and water, waste disposal before disaster impact, and overall damage information during the impact. The findings are crucial in terms of information gathering and dissemination to maintain the lives and livelihoods of human being during disasters. This study can contribute to both research and practice in terms of disaster information analysis and better preliminary examination of the preference for information needs from similar disasters with different scales and geographies.

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The 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami exposed many hidden weaknesses in Japan’s tsunami countermeasures. Since then, many improvements have been made in both structural measures (numerical simulations, coastal defense structures, building damage assessment and control forests) and nonstructural measures (warning/observation and evacuation). This review summarizes the lessons and improvements in the five-year time period after the 2011 event. After five years, most of the lessons from the 2011 tsunami have been applied, including more realistic tsunami simulations using very fine grids, methods to strengthen coastal defense structures, building evacuations and coastal forests, improved warning content and key points to improve evacuation measures. Nevertheless, large future challenges remain, such as an advanced simulation technique and system for real-time hazard and risk prediction, implementation of coastal defense structures/multilayer countermeasures and encouraging evacuation. In addition, among papers presented at the coastal engineering conference in Japan, the proportion of tsunami-related research in Japan increased from 15% to 35% because of the 2011 tsunami, and approximately 65–70% of tsunami-related studies involve numerical simulation, coastal structures and building damage. These results show the impact of the 2011 tsunami on coastal engineering related to academic institutions and consulting industries in Japan as well as the interest in each tsunami countermeasure. @en