Plenary Session V

Professor Kasapoglu: Shortly after returning from DRC03, another major earthquake struck Turkey, with devastating consequences, especially to schools and school children. Professor Kasapoglu found that the information obtained during DRC03, especially the earthquake hazard reduction for schools information published by OES, was very useful for mitigating future hazards. This information that he obtained in California was put to immediate use in Turkey, with the net result that the earthquake risks at schools have been reduced.

Taizo Nakatani: Taizo spent 10 months at OES under the California-Shizuoka Exchange Program. His special focus was on learning and understanding California's Standardized Emergency Management Systems (SEMS). Taizo has evaluated SEMS for its applicability to Shizuoka and Japan. His talk will focus on the capabilities SEMS provides to professionals, thus enabling them to manage emergencies and disasters.

Erny Ekblom: An overview of the journey taken by the BOEING Company to address seismic risks at multiple geographic locations in the contiguous United States. The presentation will cover the detailed risk mitigation solutions that were deployed to protect critical computing and network systems and company assets and it will highlight the strategies, solutions, deployment and related events of a successful program.

Professor Chin: The Government of Taiwan has now created National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) with the sole purpose of mitigating the effects of natural disasters. Professor Chen will provide a description of the organizational structure of the NCDR and its activities. The presentation will also address the benefits to be gained from cooperation between Taiwan and California and how this collaboration will contribute towards risk reduction in both countries.