Program

85% of economic losses due to natural hazards in the world are caused by wind damage. Losses from tornado and other gusts, as well as from typhoons, have been increasing. The relationship between global warming and those disasters has also been discussed. It is particularly critical for Japan and Asia to mitigate wind damage, because they have large cities with closely spaced tall buildings and high-density residential areas where the majority of buildings are of wood. Typhoons and cyclones have frequently caused damage to cities and buildings, and the resulting large losses have greatly impacted society. Rapid urbanization and population concentration accompanying economic growth in China , etc. have become a cause of global environmental deterioration. Thus, establishment of a sustainable society with decreased energy consumption and environmental load is an urgent task. While the world has faced increasing strong-wind disasters caused by typhoons, tornadoes, etc., construction of super-high-rise buildings continues in Asia and the Middle East . An example is the Burji Dubai project, etc. Thus, in order to ensure human/social safety and global environmental sustainability, it will be necessary to promote relevant technology improvement. To this end, the global nature of interdisciplinary wind engineering needs to be fully understood. The proposed Center will carry out education/research programs on the following areas: mitigating the strong-wind disasters (wind-resistant design field), saving natural resources by utilizing natural energy (natural cross ventilation field), and Ensuring global environmental sustainability (wind environment air pollution field). The Center will establish EVO (Engineering Virtual Organization) and VORTEX- Winds (Virtual Organization for Reducing Toll of Extreme Winds), which will integrate the work of research institutes all over the world via an information infrastructure. It will also develop a more advanced education/research system. This will more effectively promote the shift from center-based to center-to-center-based education/research on a global scale, which the applicant center has previously recommended. Consequently, the proposed Center aims to establish a long-life recycling-oriented urban system and to realize a reliable, safe global environment by mitigating wind hazards. It also aims to establish VORTEX-Winds, which is a global education/research system designed to improve the quality of engineering education/research institutes around the world.

The proposed Center will effectively organize specialists from three fields: wind-resistant design, natural/cross ventilation and wind environment/air pollution. Then, it will holistically carry out the education and research on wind effects on buildings and the urban environment. In the wind-resistant design field, the Center will carry out research on topics such as high mobility wind observation aimed at mitigating typhoon and tornado disasters, GPS wind response monitoring/ networking aimed at ensuring building safety, and rational wind-resistant design utilizing EVO. In the natural/ cross ventilation field, the Center will aim to realize a long-term society with small environmental load. It will research methods for designing natural cross ventilation that efficiently utilizes natural draft energy to reduce consumer ventilation energy. It will also develop a hybrid system for dehumidifying/cooling using natural draft and radiation heat by taking advantage of the meteorological conditions of the Asia-Pacific region. In the wind environment/air pollution field, the Center will research countermeasures to the heat island problem, which is serious in Asian countries. It will also research countermeasures to heat exhaust and air pollution problems for urban areas where the pollution sources are both internal and external.

The basic philosophy is love. Education and research in the fields of wind-resistant design, natural cross ventilation and wind environment/air pollution are based on love of human beings, global resources and the atmospheric environment. To develop truly capable international human resources from graduate students, the Center will hold open seminars 20 times a year and will implement international internship programs for PhD students (8 persons a year), short-term fellowships (for 3 months, 10 persons a year), and an international advanced school on wind engineering (for a week, once a year). In addition, the Center will provide a global reformative CI learning system using VORTEX-Winds, and will establish a creative curriculum and improve the quality of educational research centers: not only the proposed Center but also other centers around the world. With this educational system, the Center aims at supplying society with students, engineers and researchers who are fully capable of handling wind loading/environmental evaluation methods, experimental methods, simulation, modeling, etc. as well as achieving international leadership in exploring new frontiers of wind engineering.