Greeting

Cultural heritage rooted in the local communities of historical cities is the achievment of human cultural activities nurtured over a long period of time and is valuable common social capital. It is the responsibility of today’s society to protect this irreplaceable cultural value from the threat of disasters and to pass it on to future generations.

The tangible and intangible cultural heritage of historical cities contains a wealth of wisdom, technology, and experience of our predecessors to face and coexist sincerely with the natural environment and disasters. The Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural Heritage, Ritsumeikan University (R-DMUCH) aims to realize a culture of disaster mitigation that can be passed on to the future by extracting such wisdom of our predecessors and rooting it in the community as a whole. For this purpose, we are working on research issues related to cultural heritage disaster prevention or historical city disaster prevention, based on a multifaceted evaluation of historical, cultural, and technological values that transcends the boundaries of the academic disciplines of humanities and science and engineering.

We also intend to create a platform for both domestic and international research projects in collaborating with various research organizations such as the Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University that makes the best use of information technology archiving cultural materials.

R-DMUCH celebrates 20 years since its establishment and will continue collaborating with industry-government academia, NPO/NGO, and international institute including local societies by engaging in development of the disaster mitigation of the cultural heritage, researching history and traditions to carry forward cultural values, acquiring disaster mitigation technologies that can be applied to the field, and producing work-ready practitioners and young researchers who will take charge of the new research developments.

We also organize the educational research environment in order to make a practical contribution to the society as a center of excellence for the field of disaster mitigation of cultural heritage.

We sincerely wish for your continued supports and cooperation.

Shinta YOSHITOMI
Director of Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural Heritage