RCAST Interdisciplinary Project
Discussion Session in “Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Project”

On June 27, the Great East Japan Earthquake Archive Project held a discussion session at the RCAST Café in the 14th Annexbuilding. Under the shared goal of recording, archiving and utilizing various types of information related to the Great East Japan Earthquake (including pre-earthquake information), this project focuses particularly on holding free, open discussions among researchers from a variety of fields. This time, Professor Shunya Yoshimi of the University of Tokyo Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies was invited as the guest speaker. He delivered a presentation on the theme of “Earthquake Archive and Cultural Sustainability – Creation of a Knowledge Recycling Society and Archive Hubs.

With experiences in various archive projects, Professor Yoshimi pointed out the following:

• In a network society, information should not just flow. Mechanisms to accumulate and recycle information should be implemented in the society.
• Academic studies create value by integrating existing data and knowledge with theories. Collaboration among universities may be needed to create value by making use of recorded knowledge in archives and other places, and through discussions and interactions.
• Currently the mechanisms to preserve disaster records and utilize disaster prevention information are region specific, and the whole picture has not yet been understood. In this context, how well will we be able to build the mechanism to share disaster experiences with and from many other places?
• IT enterprises in the US are making the shift to collective intelligence archived in many sources to open up the next information frontier. To meet the ongoing shift, it is also important to develop archivists and this career path in Japan.

A vigorous debate on these issues and challenges was moderated by Professor Izuru Makihara.