exercise

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 201444 0163-6804/14/$25.00 © 2014 IEEE

INTRODUCTION The East Japan Great Earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused severe damage across the wide area of Northern Japan. A massive 9.0 earthquake destroyed a huge number of buildings and enor- mous amounts of equipment, and the devastat- ing tsunami, more than 15 m , swept over cities, towns, villages, and coastal residential areas in the northern part of the country, as shown in Fig. 1. This tragedy shocked the world, and the numbers of about 15,841 dead and 3490 missing persons are still increasing today [1].

Many Japanese coastal residential areas were also geologically isolated [2]. The communica- tion networks such as Internet, cellular phones, and fixed phones could not be used after the huge shakes. Furthermore, there was a widespread blackout over northern and central Japan [3, 4]. The loss of the ability to transmit disaster information caused delay in rescuing vic-

tims, conducting people to shelters, confirming safe resident evacuation and urgent medical treatment just after the disaster. In order to quickly recover the information infrastructure of several local government offices and evaluation offices in the disaster areas, our disaster volun- teer team, which was made up of our network research laboratory students at Iwate Prefectural University, went out to the disaster area. Through the our recovery activity, we were able to find serious problems with the information network and system in the coastal areas, and we learned that a new robust and resilient commu- nications method was strongly required to trans- port significant information even when severe disasters occur.

In the following, the scale of the Great East Japan Earthquake is explained. Next, our disas- ter information network recovery activities in several of the disaster areas are shown. Then, through a posteriori investigation in the disaster areas, the problems of information network methods in disasters are precisely discussed. After that, effective means of communication during disasters are discussed.

EAST JAPAN GREAT EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI

In the history of of major earthquakes in world history, the Great East Japan Earthquake was the fourth largest earthquake, following the Great Chile Earthquake in 1960 (M9.5), Great Alaskan Earthquake in 1964 (M9.2), and Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami in 2004 (M9.1) [5], as summarized in Table 1. Moreover, this large-scale earthquake also brought serious sec- ondary disasters such as blackout, fire, nuclear crisis, and electrical power supply failure.

The disabling of information network systems also brought many serious problems over a wide area of Japan, such as the isolation of damaged cities, lack of communication means, and delay of rescue. Compared to recent historical severe earthquakes in Japan, such as the Hanshin-Awaji Great Earthquake in 1995 and Chuetsu Earth-

ABSTRACT Recently serious natural disasters such as

earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, and hurricanes have occurred at many places around the world. The East Japan Great Earthquake on March 11, 2011 had more than 19,000 victims and destroyed a huge number of houses, buildings, loads, and seaports over the wide area of Northern Japan. Information networks and systems and electric power lines were also severely damaged by the great tsunami. Functions such as the highly developed information society, and residents’ safety and trust were completely lost. Thus, through the lessons from this great earthquake, a more robust and resilient information network has become one of the significant subjects. In this article, our information network recovery activity in the aftermath of the East Japan Great Earthquake is described. Then the problems of current information network systems are ana- lyzed to improve our disaster information net- work and system through our network recovery activity. Finally we suggest the systems and func- tions required for future large-scale disasters.

LESSONS OF THE GREAT EAST JAPAN EARTHQUAKE

Yoshitaka Shibata, Iwate Prefectural University

Noriki Uchida, Saitama Institute of Technology

Norio Shiratori, Waseda University

Analysis of and Proposal for a Disaster Information Network from Experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 44

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 2014 45

quake in 2004, there were many different prob- lems because lifestyles have been dramatically changed by the recent highly developed informa- tion society. Since cellular phone services have greatly increased over one decade, the damage and congestion of cellular phones caused serious problems for rescue activity, resident safety con- firmation, food distribution, and medical treat- ment. The lack of disaster information is considered a main reason for these delayed activities. Moreover, the lack of fuel and elec- tricity also caused the delay of rescue and sup- port activities for the evacuators.

INFORMATION NETWORK RECOVERY ACTIVITY

The authors’ volunteer team was organized mainly by the graduate and undergraduate stu- dents in our research laboratory of Iwate Prefec- tural University for supporting evacuated local governmental offices and residents in the coastal areas just after the disaster in order to recover information networks and support residential lives in the evacuation shelters. They were well trained for reconstructing information networks, and setting client PCs and server systems to con- nect to the Internet using wired and wireless LANs, mobile 3G routers, and satellite IP net- work devices as shown in Fig. 2.

Even after a week after the earthquake, there was still less information on the coastal side of Iwate prefecture at that time. Tragic tsunami news were aired repeatedly, but there was a lack of information about many residential lives and damage in the area because phone, Internet, or email communication could not perform their functions in the coastal cities.

In our volunteers’ activities, many problems had to be overcome to reach the severely dam- aged area. First of all, it was difficult to obtain gas for our truck. A lack of fuel, including gas and heating oil, had spread throughout northern and middle Japan, and the lines of cars waiting for gas became over 3 km long around our uni- versity. Thus, we spent one week obtaining fuel for our truck to go out to the disaster areas.

Second, sudden lower temperature froze mountain roads. Our university is located in the middle of Iwate prefecture, and it is about 100 km away from the coast. However, our truck had to cross over a mountain pass to get there, and the frozen road made it very difficult for many rescue vehicles to reach the disaster areas. Thus, the lack of gas and frozen roads delayed our res- cue activities on the coast.

One week after the disaster, our volunteers could reach Miyako city, to participate in the activities conducted by the self-defense force at the tragic disaster scene. Our volunteer members could quickly recover the information network infrastructure in the local government offices and evacuation shelters in various cities. Particu- larly, our laboratory students could work well on setting up network devices and servers to con- nect to the Internet in the tragic disaster scene, although some of our students suffered from post traumatic stress disorder after going back home.

Through the recovery activities, we found and encountered many problems with information network infrastructure in disaster areas. The main problems of our network relief activities in disaster areas are: • Fuel shortage for cars delayed the rescue

activity. • Electricity power supply and batteries for

information network systems were damaged. • Network devices and servers were damaged. • Wired networks were completely discon-

nected. • The cellular phone system was damaged

and congested. • The Government Disaster Radio System

broke down

Figure 1. The East Japan Great Earthquake in Iwate Prefecture, Japan.

Table 1. Large-scale earthquakes in the world.

Year Disaster Magnitude Fatalities

1960 Great Chile Earthquake in 1960 9.5 2231

1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake 9.2 131

2004 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami (off the west coast of northern Sumatra)

9.1 220,000~

2011 Japan Earthquake and Tsunami 9.0 Dead 15,841 Missing 3490 (12 21, 2011)

1952 Kamchatka Earthquake 9.0 0

2010 Great Chile Earthquake in 2010 8.8 525

1906 Ecuador-Colombia Earthquake 8.8 1000

1965 Rat Islands Earthquake, Alaska 8.7 0

2005 2005 Sumatra Earthquake, Indonesia

8.6 1346

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 45

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 201446

• TV broadcasting could not be watched. • Resident safety information and disaster

information were reported only by hand- written papers at many evacuation shelters. These problems should be precisely investi-

gated and analyzed to improve the current disas- ter information system.

PROBLEMS OF INFORMATION NETWORK MEANS ON DISASTER

T h e E a s t J a p a n G r e a t E a r t h q u a k e c a u s e d many problems such as rescue, food distribu- tion, and evacuation responses. Malfunction of information network systems was a part of major problems after the earthquake. In par- ticular, the lack of disaster information such as the safety of evaluated residents, damage scale and degree of houses, buildings, lands, roads, bridges, seaports, and so on brought much confusion to various activities. Table 2 is a summary of various information networks and their functional conditions in Iwate Pre- fecture obtained through our network recov- ery activities.

CELLULAR PHONES

O n e o f t h e m a i n p r o b l e m s o f i n f o r m a t i o n network systems was traffic congestion due to t h e r a p i d t r a f f i c g e n e r a t i o n o f t h e c e l l u l a r phone system. According to the Ministry of I n t e r n a l A f f a i r s a n d C o m m u n i c a t i o n , t h e numbers of call requests on cellular phones just after the earthquake were more than 10 times larger than the usual case, and the max- imum call control ratio of voice communica- tion went up to 95 percent, which means that only one person out of 20 people could use phone service [6].

I n t h e n o r t h e r n p a r t o f J a p a n , h e a v i l y damaged by the earthquake, the congestion i n t h e c e l l u l a r p h o n e s y s t e m w a s s e v e r e l y heavy. The numbers of call requests went to about eight times larger than the usual case, a n d t h e m a x i m u m c o n g e s t i o n t i m e w a s a b o u t 3 0 m i n j u s t a f t e r t h e e a r t h q u a k e a s shown in Fig. 3.

Thus, cellular phone services were not avail- able for a long time after the earthquake and caused serious communication problems in a wide area of Japan. As a result, not only the damage of network devices but also the conges- tion of cellular phones are considered as the rea- sons the serious lack of disaster information, such as about rescues, evacuation shelter, and safety information occurred.

Moreover, in the disaster area such as the coastal area of Iwate prefecture, many wired networks and servers of the telecommunication companies were broken down by the huge tsuna- mi. Therefore, fixed phone, broadband Internet services, and even the local government network system were out of service. The public web ser- vices and email systems in the Iwate prefectural office as the countermeasures headquarters were also down. This failure caused serious informat- ics isolation of the coastal cities in Iwate prefec- ture.

SATELLITE IP NETWORK On the other hand, some information network s y s t e m s w e r e c o n s i d e r e d u s e f u l i n d i s a s t e r areas. In our network recovery activities on the coast of Iwate prefecture, satellite systems for Internet such as IPSTAR and wireless LANs functioned well for reactivating the network communication systems. Although there were problems with lack of electricity, both systems were used to quickly reactivate in some evacu- ation shelters and disaster countermeasure headquarters.

WIRELESS LANS Although a satellite system does not have higher speed than a broadband network service such as fiber to the home (FTTH), the main traffic on the Internet under the emergency situation information was text-based contents such as email, web-based resident safety information, and social network systems (SNS). Therefore, a satellite system was practically useful even in such an emergency situation because this system could be used anywhere, even disaster areas, with portable power supply. Wireless LAN also worked practically for temporal network recon-

Figure 2. Network recovery by Iwate Prefectural University students.

Figure 3. The numbers of calls by cellular phone on March 11, 2011 in North- ern Japan.

9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 23:00

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 46

struction since the inside of public buildings such as local governmental offices were damaged by the disaster.

RADIO BROADCASTING Radio broadcasting, especially local community FM broadcasting, was very useful. Since most of the evacuation shelters and offices did not have electricity just after disaster, radio broad- casting was the only way to obtain local disaster information. Community FM stations could broadcast the required information specific for the evacuators in the disaster areas such as resi- dential safety information of families, medical and hospital information, food distribution information, and local administrative informa- tion, while major radio stations broadcasted more general disaster information such as life- line information and transportation information in the wide areas.

INTERNET Th e I n t e r n e t w a s u s e d i n v a r i o u s w a y s f o r m a n y a c t i v i t i e s i n t h e G r e a t E a s t J a p a n Earthquake. Although the Internet utiliza- tion rate was 74.7 percent before the earth- q u a k e i n n o r t h e r n J a p a n , t h e r a t e g r e a t l y decreased to about 20 percent just after the earthquake. This was because many Internet services in Northern Japan were unavailable d u e t o t h e d a m a g e a n d c o n g e s t i o n o f t h e i n f o r m a t i o n n e t w o r k s . T h e n i t t o o k a b o u t from one to two weeks to reactivate temporal network services around Morioka, Iwate pre- fecture, Japan.

S i n c e m o s t o f t h e t e m p o r a r y h o u s e s f o r evacuators were located on the mountainside, Internet services were not originally provided. Therefore, temporal communication cabling w a s n e e d e d t o c o n s t r u c t n e t w o r k i n f r a - structure for the area. There were many tem- poral housing areas where Internet service by wired networks such as FTTH were not avail- able even after several months. However, a s a t e l l i t e n e t w o r k a n d f i x e d w i r e l e s s a c c e s s (FWA) were installed for those areas support- e d b y t h e M i n i s t r y o f I n t e r n a l A f f a i r s a n d Communications.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICE NETWORKS The Iwate Information Highway, which was a wired backbone information infrastructure in Iwate prefecture and connected all of the local government offices in the cities, towns, and villages in Iwate prefecture, was severely dam- aged by the earthquake. The local government office networks of the cities and towns in the coastal areas were also completely damaged by t h e t s u n a m i . T h e y r e c o n s t r u c t e d t e m p o r a l LANs to communicate with the countermea- sure headquarters in the prefectural office and i n s i d e o r g a n i z a t i o n s s u c h a s f i r e s t a t i o n s , s c h o o l s , h o s p i t a l s , a n d r o a d s u r v e i l l a n c e o f f i c e s . M o r e o v e r , s i n c e m o s t i n f o r m a t i o n servers of the local governments were dam- aged, disaster information was not available to the residents of Iwate prefecture. Therefore, they used the Internet to share disaster infor- m a t i o n t h r o u g h b l o g s a n d S N S a c o u p l e o f days after the earthquake.

MEDICAL AND DISASTER VOLUNTEERS NETWORKS

Medical organizations also used the Internet for temporal communication between local and cen- tral hospitals. Not only evacuation shelters. but also all local hospitals and central hospitals were disconnected from communication in Iwate pre- fecture just after the earthquake; then temporal LANs were quickly constructed between shel- ters, local hospitals, and central hospitals to enable use of the Internet.

Disaster volunteers used the Internet as the communication means for their various activi- ties. They shared disaster information by SNS, disclosing the evacuated residents lists on each evacuation shelter by web broadcasts and con- firming road conditions by a GIS map. Com- pared to the case of other previous Japanese earthquakes, there were many new trials using the Internet by the disaster volunteers on the earthquake. Because of the recent developments in information and communication technology such as smart phones, tablet terminals, wireless broadband services, web services, and SNS, were well functional. Thus, the Internet is expected to perform more important role as communication tools not only in normal state but also in emer- gent state.

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 2014 47

Table 2. Large-scale earthquakes in the world.

System Conditions Details

Radio broadcasting ○ Local community FM stations functioned particularly well.

TV broadcasting × Cannot be watched due to widespread blackout.

Fixed phone × Line disconnection and damaged central office and remote electronics

Cellular phone (voice) × Traffic congestion and damaged base stations

Internet (wired, wireless, and mobile networks) 

Worked depending on communi- cation lines

Local government information supper highway

× Line disconnection, power supply failure, and damaged network devices

LANs in local government office ×

Line disconnection and damaged network devices.

Local government radio system for disaster 

Damaged base stations and relay stations

Personal analog radio communication ○

Worked well between licensed users

WLAN and FWA ○ Quickly recovered information infrastructure after disaster

Satellite IP system (Internet) ○

Quickly recovered information infrastructure after disaster

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 47

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 201448

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS MEANS IN A DISASTER

A l t h o u g h t h e r e h a v e b e e n m a n y p r o b l e m s regarding the information network and system by the Great East Japan Earthquake, some communication means could effectively work i n p r a c t i c e t o r e a c t i v a t e t h e t e m p o r a l n e t - work. This could be important for future stud- ies of disaster information systems. The main useful network systems through our network recovery activities in Iwate prefecture are the following. • The satellite IP system (IPSTAR) quickly

recovered Internet communication in many disaster areas.

• A 3G router and a wireless network (IEEE802.11 b/g/n) were used for many governmental offices and evacuation shel- ters in temporal regions.

• A wireless network (IEEE802.11 b/g/j/n) could be used for covering the disaster area quickly.

• A satellite phone system was fully used (each local city government possessed two phones).

• A cognitive wireless router by NiCT was useful in the many shelters [5].

• Twitter, blogs, and SNS were practical for realtime information sharing such as gas station, transportation, foods, and ATM information. The authors’ volunteer team also used Twit-

ter for sharing disaster information about Tak- izawa village in which our university is located, and Morioka city, which is the capital city in Iwate prefecture.

Through our Twitter services, we realized that electricity, fuel, food, and public trans- portation information as well as disaster infor- mation were strongly required for the residents. Thus, since most of the communication means were unavailable for a couple of weeks, the role of Internet usage was important for communi- cating and sharing disaster information in Iwate Prefecture.

REQUIRED SYSTEMS AND FUNCTIONS FOR FUTURE LARGE-SCALE DISASTERS CONNECTIVITY REQUIREMENTS FOR DISASTERS

Through our disaster recovery experience, we learned that network connectivity is very impor- tant, even though network conditions were worse than usual. Under the network conditions just after a large disaster, email and Twitter by send- ing small numbers of packets were very helpful and could reduce total network traffic. Besides, initial disaster information such as resident safe- ty and evacuation place information mainly con- sisted of small text contents.

Figure 4 shows the network conditions just after the disaster at Iwate Prefectural Universi- ty. The network conditions were measured by i s s u i n g P i n g p a c k e t s w i t h 6 4 b y t e s t o www.google.com every hour. The horizontal axis presents the total elapsed hours just after the first earthquake, and the vertical axis presents round-trip time (RTT) in milliseconds and pack- et error rate (PER) by percentage. Just after the e a r t h q u a k e , n e t w o r k c o n d i t i o n s b e c a m e extremely worse, 100–150 ms RTT and 20–50 p e r c e n t i n P E R c o m p a r e d w i t h 2 0 m s a n d a l m o s t 0 p e r c e n t u n d e r n o r m a l c o n d i t i o n s . Then, about 15 hours later, network conditions became even worse. This is because network access had been increased from early morning in order to get disaster information on the web. However, email and Twitter services could bare- ly be used during this period, and it was very helpful to collect and send disaster information. Eventually, the electricity in Takizawa village w a s r e c o v e r e d , a n d t h e n e t w o r k c o n d i t i o n s returned to normal.

Through observing the network conditions, network connectivity is the most important for a disaster information system even with smaller throughput and larger delay. That is, data con- nection should be kept robust, as shown in Fig. 5. In this figure, the wired network is easily affected by disaster. The wireless network and cognitive wireless network (CWN) are stronger than the wired network, but are disconnected as the scale of the disaster grows. On the other hand, the never die network (NDN), explained in the next section, can maintain robust data connection even if the scale of the disaster is quite huge.

For the proposed network, it is necessary to provide minimal data transmission for text data transmission, such as email or web services, even after disasters.

REQUIRED RESILIENT NETWORK FOR DISASTER By considering the above analysis, we propose a resilient disaster network, the NDN, for Japan because 70 percent of Japan land is active moun- tains, and Japan surrounded by large oceans. The NDN mainly consists of self-powered fixed wireless network stations, cognitive mobile sta- tions, and wireless balloon stations, as shown in Fig. 6.

Furthermore, the fixed wireless network sta- tions are constructed by cognitive wireless LANs such as mobile 3G routers, IEEE 802.11b,g,n,j, IEEE802.16, and a satellite IP network including

Figure 4. Network conditions in IPU under disaster.

Time (total hours) 20

50

N u

m b

er s

0

100

150

200

250

0 40 60 80 100 120

RTT PER

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 48

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 2014 49

self-power, such as a combination of solar pan- els, wind turbines, and fuel batteries to generate electricity without time limitations.

The cognitive wireless network units are con- trolled by a software defined network (SDN) to be able to select the best wireless path and route depending on changes in the network communi- cation environment, such as electric power den- sity, throughput, delay, jitter, and packet loss rate, by disaster. Even though the worst case occurred where the conventional power supply and all the wireless LANs and 3G networks are damaged, a satellite IP network could reliably work and connect to the Internet. The fixed wireless network stations are usually installed on the roofs of local government offices and disas- ter headquarters, and work as central base sta- tions to cognitive mobile stations and wireless balloon stations.

The cognitive mobile stations also consist of different wireless LANs, 3G routers, and satel- lite IP networks, and are used to provide com- munication between mobile stations or mobile station and the fixed wireless network station in the disaster area. In order to cover a wide com- munication area, SDN-based ad hoc and multi- hop functions are supported, and their antenna directions are dynamically controlled to maxi- mize the electric power density using GPS data. The electric power for those network devices is supplied from the power generator on its car. Using the cognitive mobile station, the disaster information can be collected in the disaster area and transmitted to the disaster headquarters in real time.

A wireless balloon network station is used in areas where cognitive mobile stations cannot pass or villages are geologically isolated by the disaster. In order to cover a wide communica- tion area, SDN-based cognitive wireless sta- tions with several LANs are also attached to an oval shaped balloon to reduce the influence of the wind and launched about 40–100 m high in the sky. In addition, a cognitive wireless bal- loon station has an auto configuration function to horizontally and automatically connect to other wireless balloons based on the power sig- nal density. Therefore, by launching multiple ballooned wireless network nodes, a horizontal ad hoc network is automatically organized in minimum spanning tree configurations depend- ing on each power signal density in the sky. T h u s , q u i c k c o m m u n i c a t i o n n e t w o r k i n f r a - structure in a disaster area can be realized and connected to a fixed wireless network station. Eventually, the local governmental officers in the disaster area can access the local govern- ment headquarters, and the residents under the wireless balloon network can access the Internet.

By combining these three different stations, the information network infrastructure in a seriously damaged area can be recovered quick- ly and reliably even when the electric power supply and wired network are completely and severely damaged. Thus, the residents can com- municate with each other using smartphones and tablet terminals, and local government offi- cers can collect, send, and share the disaster information.

CONCLUSIONS In this article, we describe the scale and charac- teristics of the East Japan Great Earthquake and Tsunami. We analyze the state of the informa- tion network and systems in the disaster areas through our information network recovery activi- ty in the coastal areas just after the disaster. We found both the weakness of the current informa- tion networks, particularly wired networks, fixed and cellular phone networks, and the govern- mental information highways, and the usefulness of satellite networks and WLANs. It is clear that the connectivity of the information network is the most important for residents who evacuate to preserve their security and trust even though some of the information network and systems are damaged. Therefore, as we suggest in this article, disaster information networks in the near future should be constructed by combining wired, wireless, and satellite networks to realize a never-die-network environment in both normal and urgent cases.

REFERENCES [1] Japan Police Department, “The Great East Japan Disas-

ter,” http://www.npa.go.jp/archive/keibi/biki/index.htm. [2] N. Uchida, K. Takahata, and Y. Shibata. “Disaster Infor-

mation System from Communication Traffic Analysis and Connectivity (Quick Report from Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on March 11th, 2011),” 14th Int’l. Conf. Network-Based Information Systems, Tirana, Albania, Sept. 2011, pp. 279–85.

Figure 5. Supported system failure by scale of disaster.

NDN

Wireless

Wired

Scale of disaster

C o

n n

ec ti

vi ty

Robust connection

CWN

Figure 6. Never die network.

Satellite

Disaster headquarters

Fire stationMobile nodeResidence

Relay station

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 49

IEEE Communications Magazine • March 201450

[3] Y. Shibata, N. Uchida, and Y. Ohashi, ”Problem Analysis and Solutions of Information Network Systems on East Japan Great Earthquake,” 4th Int’l. Wksp. Disaster and Emergency Information Network System, Mar. 2012, pp. 1054–59.

[4] N. Uchida, K. Takahata, and Y. Shibata. “Network Relief Activity with Cognitive Wireless Network for Large Scale Disaster,” 4th Int’l. Wksp. Disaster and Emergency Information Network Systems, Mar. 2012, pp. 1043–47.

[5] Japan Meteorological Agency, “Past Reports of Earth- quake and Tsunami,” http://www.seisvol.kishou.go.jp/ eq/higai/higai-1995.html.

[6] Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, “2010 White Paper Information and Communications in Japan,” http://www.soumu.go.jp /johotsusintokei/ whitepaper/h22.html.

[7] Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, “About How to Secure Communication Systems on Emergent Affair Such as a Large Scale Disaster,” http://www.soumu.go.jp/main_sosiki/kenkyu/saigai /index.html.

[8] NICT, “Construction of Cognitive Wireless Router in Dis- aster Area,” http://www.nict.go.jp/press/2011/04/13- 1.html.

[9] Japan Meteorological Agency, “Report of Past Great Earthquake around Japan,” http://www.seisvol.kishou. go.jp/eq/higai/higai1996-new.html.

[10] T. Takano, “Overview of the 2011 East Japan Earth- quake Disaster,” The 2011 East Japan Earthquake Bul- letin of the Tohoku Geographical Association, 9 April, 2011, http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/tga/disaster/articles/e-con- tents7.html.

BIOGRAPHIES YOSHITAKA SHIBATA [M] ([email protected]) received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Cal- ifornia, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, h e w a s a r e s e a r c h m e m b e r a t B e l l C o m m u n i c a t i o n Research (former AT&T Bell Laboratory), U.S.A., where

he was working in the area of high-speed information network and protocol design for multimedia information services. From 1989 to 1998, he was with the Informa- tion and Computer Science Department at Toyo Univer- s i t y , J a p a n , a s a p r o f e s s o r , w h e r e h e c o n d u c t s a n intelligent multimedia network laboratory. Since 1998, he is working at Iwate Prefectural University, Japan, as an executive director of the Media Center and a profes- sor of the Faculty of Software and Information Science in the same university. His research interests include dis- aster information networks, resilient networks, wireless ad hoc networks, cognitive wireless networks, and new generation networks. He is a member of ACM, the Infor- mation Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), and the Insti- tute of Electronic and Communication Engineering in Japan (IEICE).

NORIKI UCHIDA [M] received his B.S. degree from the Univer- sity of Tennessee in 1994, his M.S. degree in software and information science from Iwate Prefectural University in 2003, and a Ph.D. from the same university in 2011. Cur- rently he is an associate professor at the Saitama Institute of Technology. His research interests include cognitive wireless networks, QoS, and heterogeneous networks. He is a member of IPSJ and IEICE.

NORIO SHIRATORI [F] is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Global Information and Telecommunication Stud- ies, Waseda University, Tokyo. He is a Professor Emeritus and visiting professor of Tohoku University, Sendai. He is also a board member of Hakodate Future University. He is a fellow of the Japan Foundation of Engineering Societies (JFES), IPSJ, and IEICE. He was President of IPSJ (2009–2011), Chair of the IEEE Sendai Section (2010-2011), and Vice Chair of the IEEE Japan Council (2013–2014). He has received a Science and Technology Award (Research Division from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan) in 2009, an Honorary Mem- ber in 2012, IPSJ Honorary Member in 2013, and many others.

SHIBATA_LAYOUT_Layout 3/4/14 11:12 AM Page 50