Research Topics

Policy-oriented research is conducted for the mitigation of water-related disasters such as cyclones, rainstorms, floods and landslides by investigating their mechanisms, and analyzing their frequency and magnitude. Water resources problems such as droughts and water quality are also research targets. International collaborative research activities are implemented under the frameworks of UNESCO-IHP.


  • Field studies for advanced management of water resource and flood disasters

Through field investigations and experiments, we identify the socio-environmental characteristics of study sites. Based on the understanding, we propose a new technology and policy for better management of water resource and flood disaster mitigations relevant to the regions.

  •  Statistical Analysis of Extreme Events

To design river structures such as embankment and dams, frequency analysis based on extreme value statistical theory is conducted from historic records (e.g. annual maximum discharge). The analyzed result is called quantile, representing extreme values corresponding a specific return period (e.g. discharge for 100 year return period). We study hydrologic frequency analysis to discover more accurate methods for limited data regions and non-parametric method for regions with long-term records. Furthermore, a method to analyze non-stationary data associated to climate change is also investigated in our lab.

  • Water-related disasters induced by the climate change

Policy-oriented research is conducted for the mitigation of water-related disasters such as cyclones, rainstorms, floods and landslides by investigating their mechanisms, and analyzing their frequency and magnitude. Water resources problems such as droughts and water quality are also research targets. International collaborative research activities are implemented under the frameworks of UNESCO-IHP.

  • Development of Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation Model

Our lab has been developing distributed rainfall-runoff models, which represent spatially dsitributed geographic information such as topography and landuse as well as radar estimated rainfall. Recently we work also on new model development to simulate both rainfall-runoff and inundation processes. The development and application of Rainfall-Runoff-Model (RRI) is one of main topics in our lab.

  • Real-time predictions on flooding with ICT

Our research area covers also real-time flood predictions by using distributed rainfall-runoff models. In recent years, more and more Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be utilized for obtaining disaster information with the use of social media. One of our new research topics is to investigate the use of social media information and RRI model for real-time flood inundation forecasting.

  • Water and sediment related disasters and their hazard mechanism

We study hazard mechanisms of sediment related disasters induced by severe storms and/or earth quakes. For this research topic, we conduct also lab experiments of ring shear apparatus by collaborating with International Consortium of Landslides. We study landslides in Japan and other Asian countries such as Vietnam to study hazard mechanism and disaster mitigation approaches.