Search

Naraha-machi, Fukushima Prefecture, is undergoing reconstruction from the Great East Japan Earthquake. After the lifting of the evacuation order, many of the townspeople who have returned to Naraha-machi from other cities are elderly, and there is a need to improve the working population ratio. As part of this effort, the town is promoting activities to collaborate with university students and other younger generations. Therefore, students in the author's laboratory engaged in PBL aimed at solving problems in Naraha-machi. As a result, they were able to learn about the actual problems facing Naraha-machi and their solutions. In addition, the students were able to improve their motivation for future graduation research and to demonstrate the potential of the project as an initiative to prevent the disaster from fading away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to contribute to Japan's new policy "River Basin Disaster Resilience and Sustainability by All," we focused on the disaster prevention function of paddy fields and evaluated their value. A repeated-design experiment was used to examine the valuation of residents in the Edogawa River downstream basin, with a scenario of donation to the flood control foundation for cooperative farmers. The results showed that many residents were willing to donate the money, suggesting the possibility of having public support to compensate farmers whose paddies were flooded institutionally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]