Prof. Roy C Sidle
Director, Mountain Societies Research Institute, University of Central Asia
Professor Roy Sidle’s research focuses on bio-geophysical aspects of sustainability, including geomorphic hazards. Specifically, he has been working on issues of environmental effects of land cover change, erosion processes exacerbated by mountain road building and grazing, coastal and mountain hazards – both water and sediment-related, cumulative effects of land use on water supply, etc. His research connections and collaborations with Japan, particularly at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University and Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, as well as with INRA (France) and the National University of Colombia – Medellin, KFUPM, and JICA have contributed to studies that will help to improve disaster preparedness and resilience as well as promote a better understanding of ecosystem processes that perpetuate these disasters.
Professor Sidle’s research on catchment hydrology and management directly relates to this natural hazard agenda as it provides the geomorphic and hydrologic setting in which these hazards occur. As such, understanding the fundamental processes of water and sediment movement and storage in catchments is key to better estimating the extent of flood, cyclone, chronic erosion, and landslide disasters. These topics provide the geophysical foundation for comprehensive sustainability studies. Current research in Australia is supported by CSIRO (runoff and erosion in the Burdekin catchment) and SEQ Water (landslide studies).
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He has collaborated across a broad range of disciplines including socio-economists, engineers, aquatic biologists, environmental modelers, geotechnical experts, and agriculture and forestry specialists. His interests in sustainability issues in developing nations of Southeast and East Asia where rapid land-use change and shifting demographics are occurring are of relevance to the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Sustainability Research Centre.
Prof. Fumitoshi Imaizumi’s research is focused on sediment disasters, forest hydrology, and revegetation technology. He clarifies interactions among water, soil, and vegetation in mountain areas (e.g., Southern Japanese Alps, Mt. Fuji, experimental forests in our university) using various methods including field surveys, field monitoring, remote sensing, and GIS analyses. He also tries to clarify initiation mechanisms of landslide and debris flow based on field monitoring and analyses of topographic data obtained by airborne laser scanning and SfM (structure from motion) using UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Analysis of satellite images is also used for an effective method to evaluate risk of sediment.
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Moreover, he also investigates hydrological processes in forested mountain catchments with revegetation technology on the bare areas, which is also one of the main study topics in his laboratory, aiming to understand effects and limitations of vegetation on prevention of surface erosion and landslides. The field surveys on spatial distribution of root network to evaluate reinforcement of soil strength by the root networks is also included in his primary research activities.
Prof. Fumitoshi Imaizumi
Lecturer, Shizuoka University, Japan
Shusuke Miyata
Assistant Professor, Kyoto University, Japan
Shusuke Miyata is an Assistant Professor in Kyoto University, Graduate School of Engineering. Before this, he studies Master and Doctoral degree in Kyoto University, particularly in Graduate School of Agriculture. He also had studies in TUAT as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2008-2010. He has studied hillslope hydrological processes related to sediment production such as landslide and erosion based on field observations.
His recent research interest is accurate monitoring of sediment transport rate in channel networks during extreme flood events. He struggle a new measurement approach to measure sediment transport rate in mountain rivers.'s easy.
Mega Lia Istiyanti is a Ph.D. student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, Yamanashi University. Before this, she also studies as a Master's Student in the same department, Yamanashi University. She is currently working on a landslide research project. Interest in the relation between clay minerals and slip surface and also on mitigation to reduce the risk area caused by a landslide.
Mega Lia Istiyanti
PhD student, Yamanashi University, Japan
Hendy Setiawan
Assistant Professor, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Hendy Setiawan is an Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Environmental Geology, Department of Geological Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His research interest is in geotechnical engineering, geohazards, and engineering geology; focusing on landslide dynamics, earth-fill dam, slope stability, tunneling, engineering rock-soil-mechanics, and hydro-geotechnical engineering science in the hilly slope of a river basin, water-geo-related disaster prevention, and mitigation.
He also put his concern in combining education and research platform from scientific interdisciplinary, practical, and management approaches which are based on case studies, appropriate methods, and community empowerment. Currently, he is assigned as the editor and reviewer for five reputable international journals: Landslides, Natural Hazards, EGU Solid Earth, Geoenvironmental Disasters, and International Journal of Sediment Research.
Rozaqqa Noviandi
PhD student, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan
Rozaqqa Noviandi is formerly a structural and geotechnical engineer of the Centre of Excellence of Technological Innovation for Disaster Mitigation (GAMA-InaTEK), Indonesia. He has been involved in several projects on disaster mitigation in Indonesia, particularly on landslides, floods, and volcanoes. As an engineer, he is experienced in designing structural and non-structural countermeasures against disasters, based on numerical simulations and field investigations. He also contributed to implementing landslide early warning systems in several locations in Indonesia.
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Currently, he is a Ph.D. student at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT). He focuses on evaluating factors that control landslide sediment movement or widely known as landslide mobility. He investigates the interactions among water, soil, topography, and vegetation cover on landslide mobility. He also tries to clarify the mechanisms and processes that govern such mobility based on laboratory experiments. Evaluating factors that control landslide mobility is essential for developing an effective method to evaluate the risk of landslide hazards.
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Jack Koci
Assistant Professor, James Cook University, Australia
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Jack Koci is an earth and environmental scientist with a particular interest in tropical catchment geomorphology and water quality. He has experience working across university, Government and industry and currently conducts research and teaching within the School of Earth and Environmental Science at James Cook Unviersity.
Jack's current research primarily focusses on improving understanding of the causes, processes, impacts and management of soil erosion in tropical landscapes. Jack also uses novel drone-based remote sensing techniques to map, monitor and model tropical landscapes.
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Prior to joining James Cook University, Jack worked as a Research Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He has also worked with Seqwater and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).
Yohei Arata is a PhD student and focuses on natural hazards related to geomorphic, hydrologic, and tectonic processes. Particularly, his research interest is sediment dynamics from hillslope to channel and from headwater to downstream in earthquake-affected areas overlaying by volcanic ash (e.g., Kumamoto and Hokkaido Eastern Iburi). In Kumamoto, he investigated soil, topography and hydrology in hillslopes with earthquake-induced fissures to evaluate processes of fissure formation and water infiltration.
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Currently, he investigates the linkage between landslide occurrences and associated sediment deposits as well as sediment transport and water discharge using a couple of GIS analysis and field monitoring in Hokkaido. Furthermore, his research related to seismic fissures is extended to Christchurch in New Zealand to look at fissure formation and their post-earthquake performances based on long-term field monitoring data and FEM modelling collaborated with GNS Science.
Yohei Arata
PhD student, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan
Tolga Gorum
Assistant Professor, ITU, Turkey
As a geomorphologist, he is interested in understanding and improving the current knowledge of mass wasting processes in different tectonic and geomorphic environments, their role in sculpting the landscapes and mountain range evolution as a limiting factor for topographic development. In this respect, he is working on linking the long-term variability of erosion rates and landslide episodes at regional and local scales.
He is also using modern tools such as LIDAR and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in addition to field-based observations and measurements, geospatial technologies, geomorphic mapping, morphometric analysis and radiometric dating techniques (e.g., Cosmogenic, OSL) for erosion-process deciphering. In addition, considering that my secondary field of expertise in landslide science, he seeks ways to apply soft computing techniques (e.g., Fuzzy Logic, Decision Tree Methods) to improve the landslide susceptibility and hazard models for a safer environment.