- International Digital Earth Applied Science Research Center – IDEAS　
Director of IDEAS Hiromichi, FUKUI

Mission

We, human beings, have to confront to various risks more than ever, such as natural disaster, risks embedded in mega scale science and technologies, as well as regional or ethnic conflicts, consequences of global warming and etc. These risks are inter-related each other, thus, one casual incident may explode to a global scale crisis which may result in a great threat to the sustainability of human beings. We need to develop a system to monitor and understand those threats real-time, develop a methodology to analyse the processes and the mechanisms by fusing various sciences. An approach based on GIS or geoinformatics is promising in this task. Chubu University has established the International Digital Earth Applied Science Research Center ( IDEAS ) in order to develop the new methodology to address the risks and threats. It is a new place where various researchers who have heterogeneous principles will gather.

Example of our projects – Risk Management of GLOF ( Glacier Lake Outburst Flood) in the Himalaya

Role and Functions

• The center aims at being an international research center where scientists who are pursuing Digital Earth(DE) research gather, utilize its DE facilities towards “Re-organization and creation of knowledge”.
• The center will implement continuous, long-term and comprehensive researches and eduction. We foster explorative researches for its own focused topics.
• The center is the focal point of the inheritance of researches as well as capacity building.