Prof. Dr. Norio Okada

Norio Okada was Director of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), at Kyoto University from 2009 to 2011 and is now Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University. He currently acts as an adviser to a disaster governance research institute (IDiARRG) at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. Norio Okada studied infrastructure planning, water resource management, and systems methodology at Kyoto University, gaining a B. Eng (1970), an M. Eng (1972), and a Dr. Eng (1977). As a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria from 1978 to 1980, he carried out conflict analysis of water resource development and published widely on cost allocation methods with reference to cooperative game theory. Since then, conflict analysis and game theory have been his major research interests, particularly in relation to urban planning, environmental management, and water resource development. Okada has long been engaged in scientific support for citizen-led participatory community management, especially in rural areas of Japan. During his time at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) from 1991 to 2012 he participated in several initiatives to explore a new cross-disciplinary research area called Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM). In the context of leading an extensive international research initiative to promote IDRiM, he has organised a series of international conferences and workshops in collaboration with IIASA. This research initiative resulted in the formation of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society). Okada was president of this Society until April 2017. Norio Okada is currently attempting to extend the scope of integrated disaster risk management, by taking governance, systemic risks, sustainable management, and climate change into account.