Having experienced the catastrophic disaster in 2011, Tohoku University has founded the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS).
"Disaster mitigation management aims to reduce or avoid the potential losses from natural hazards, to assure prompt assistance to victims, to achieve rapid and effective recovery, and to build disaster-resilient and sustainable societies, by five stages of the disaster management cycle; Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, Recovery and Reconstruction. The action-oriented research of the IRIDeS is a pursue of each point in the cycle and integrating and universalizing the scientific discoveries to be dedicated to the world.
The IRIDeS creates a new academia of disaster mitigation that subsumes the lessons from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster and the findings of the world-leading research into our societies with the aim of establishing the social systems responding promptly, sensibly and effectively to natural disasters, withstanding the adversities with resiliency, passing and exploiting the lessons to the forthcoming disaster management cycles"