EJEC hosted a Special Session entitled “Building Disaster Resilient Cities in ASEAN through a JICA Project” featuring the toughening of resilience among ASEAN cities at the 7th Asia Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Bangkok, Thailand from November 22 (Thursday) to 24 (Saturday), 2018. This Special Session was held on November 23 at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Hotel. A total of 11 members of EJEC attended this session, including Vice-President Isoyama and staff members of the EJ-Research Center, International Department and Bangkok Representative Office.

This Special Session used the JICA Project titled “Building Disaster and Climate Change Resilient Cities in ASEAN” which was completed in October, 2018 as the theme. Counterpart personnels in the countries and the region where the demonstration project was implemented were invited as speakers for the purpose of broadly introducing the outcomes of the project to those involved in disaster prevention in Asia and also to promote resilient cities in ASEAN.
The Japanese speakers were Mr. Hitoshi Baba from JICA, Mr. Shinichi Fukasawa from Nippon Koei Co., Ltd., – the project leader of the project, Mr. Makine Kusano from PACET Corporation, and Mr. Masashi Inoue from EJEC’s Research Center. The experts introduced the objective, purpose, results, etc. of the project. The participants from ASEAN countries including representatives of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport and Luang Prabang Provincial Government of Laos and of the National Agency for Disaster Management and Denpasar Municipal Government of Indonesia (where the demonstration project is being implemented), in addition to a representative of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation of Thailand, introduced the results of the demonstration project and the approaches adopted by each organization to strengthen urban resilience.
This Special Session was part of an annual seminar jointly organized by EJEC and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) since 2015, Eventhough a number of sessions were concurrently held on the same day, some 40 people (almost full-house) attended this special session. This shows the high level of interest in disaster prevention and strengthening resilience in urban areas in Asia.
At the conference, Professor Kimiro Meguro of the Institute of Industrial Science of the University of Tokyo was invited by EJEC as a guest speaker to give a lecture on the strengthening of urban resilience. Meanwhile, EJEC itself delivered six academic presentations, along with a booth display introducing the company.
In the coming years, EJEC will maintain its policy of further discovering and winning contracts for disaster prevention projects in Asia by means of utilizing its networks with government officials involved in disaster prevention in ASEAN countries and universities, etc., , which were further developed through the special session.