Introduction—Overview of Natural Disasters and Coastal Landforms

Abstract

Asia and the Pacific regions are exposed to severe natural disasters because many densely populated cities are sited on coastal plains. The geomorphic features in coastal areas have a key role in defining the risk levels and the vulnerability to natural disasters of coastal regions. Rapid land-use changes in recent decades have forced a transformation in risk assessment to approaches that analyze and evaluate the relationship between social structures and natural disasters. Disaster resilience should incorporate more insight into social structures and more local community activities as the next advance in disaster mitigation . The 2011 East Japan (Tohoku Japan) earthquake has presented many lessons for consideration by regional land-use planners regarding the relationship between geomorphology and tsunami damage , and the appropriate activities of local communities. In this introduction chapter, the author illustrates the relationship between a natural disaster and coastal geomorphology by using the response of the lower Abukuma River basin to the tsunami that followed the 2011 East Japan earthquake. The damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami took different forms on each type of coastal landform and demanded specific responses from the relevant social structures, including evacuation activities. Future regional planning for disaster mitigation should incorporate scientific knowledge of coastal geomorphology.