International Workshop on Marine Debris, Environmental Monitoring, and Disaster Mitigation

The Secretariat of the Headquarters for Ocean Policy, the Cabinet Secretariat, and the Ministry of the Environment in Japan have shown that a huge amount of ocean debris (estimated at roughly 150 million tons) was flushed out into the North Pacific in the wake of the catastrophic tsunami of March 11, 2011. Some portion of this is now widely recognized to have become dispersed throughout wide areas of the North Pacific Ocean. In response to this situation, the Japan Cabinet Secretariat and the Ministry of the Environment immediately organized a “Japan Task Force” (JTF) to cope with this pan-pacific environmental crisis, with members consisting of national research institutes and universities. Since then, through strong links with NOAA of the USA, the JTF has conducted nowcast and forecast simulations to determine the drift path of the 3.11 tsunami debris cloud through use of a state-of-the-art ocean-atmosphere coupled simulation system.

This OKINAWA international workshop aims to report on the current status of US-Japan joint simulations and to widely disseminate the results of this collaboration. In sharing recent information on international efforts toward better ocean-emergency responses and by considering new applications in marine science and technology, we wish to make positive contributions to disaster monitoring and mitigation. 

Please find the program and the registration form below.