No. 26 Appeared at Tomon Festival event

(Published in the December 15, 2013 issue of Koho Inagi)

The other day, I was asked to perform at the Waseda University Tomon Festival, and I took part in it. This is an event for Waseda graduates, but it is open to the general public, and various events are held every year.
From early spring this year, Mr. T, a classmate who graduated in 1985 and who graduated from the Department of Architecture, took the lead in the theme of "Earthquake resistance of non-structural members" in the midst of a series of unexpected damages and accidents caused by earthquakes and aging infrastructure. I was preparing to hold a symposium. When I was approached for the first time, I was hesitant to talk about such technical topics because I was an outsider. It was said that the project itself was likely to be lost due to the opinion that it would not be possible. I reluctantly agreed to the invitation that it would be fine just to comment from the point of view of an ordinary person. At the meeting stage, it was decided that the symposium would be too exaggerated to be a round-table discussion, and the name was decided to be ``Safety even unexpectedly, a ``safe space for everyone'' large-scale roundtable discussion.
On the day of the event, Mr. K, a graduate of the Department of Architecture and a professor at the University of Tokyo, gave a keynote speech on the dangers of suspended ceilings. Mr. K, who has completed a master's course at the Graduate School of Science and Engineering and works for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, raised the fact that there is a limit to ensuring safety from the perspective of legal regulations alone. There was a talk about the impact of unexpected discrepancies between the parties involved in the project, and Mr. A, a Waseda University professor who graduated from the Department of Architecture, talked about safe spaces from the perspective of city planning and community development.
I made a presentation on the current situation and challenges of earthquake resistance in public facilities. Inagi City has been working on earthquake resistance of "structure" from an early stage, and reinforcement work was mostly completed in 2010, before the great earthquake. Our future task is to make non-structural members earthquake resistant. Fall prevention measures are necessary for some ceilings and lighting in high places, and we plan to conduct a full inspection by this fiscal year and implement fall prevention measures over the next three years until FY2015.
This time, I had an unexpected opportunity to reunite with my classmates and make new acquaintances. Almost 30 years after graduating from university, everyone became an expert in their respective fields. I would like to make use of these personal connections in future community development.