Professor Shingo Nasgamatsu of Kansai University, Japan, and two of his junior colleagues – Dr. Yuto Shiozaki and Dr. Aya Tsujioka — visited CREATE in July to begin collaboration on research on the Wildfire Urban Interface (WUI). The researchers were hosted by CREATE Senior Fellow and Director Emeritus Adam Rose, Research Professor in the Price School of Public Policy and the Viterbi School of Engineering.
The group toured the site of the Eaton/Altadena Fire and met with local government officials and two prominent local disaster experts, Dr. Craig Davis (USC PhD Grad and Civil Engineering), who served for many years as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Chief Resilience Officer, Seismic Manager, and Geotechnical Engineering Manager; and Margaret Vinci
Manager, Office of Earthquake Programs and Early Warning SoCal Technical Engagement Coordinator, Caltech (see photo).
Professor Nagamatsu had previously served as a visiting scholar at CREATE during 2016-17, working with Professor Rose on a joint Japan Foundation grant on return migration to the Fukushima region of Japan following the 2011 nuclear reactor accident there [Link]. They also organized a Price School Bedrosian Center Symposium on the topic in 2018, which involved researchers and practitioners from both the U.S. and Japan. A more recent extension of this research has begun to develop a general framework for analyzing population return from disasters in general [Link].
Professor Rose observed that the visit will build on previous research collaboration and will serve as the basis for new work on wildfires. He noted that: “It is gratifying to see researchers from other countries to take an interest in disasters in California. At the same time, the wildfire threat is already prevalent in many other parts of the world, including Japan. This renewed collaboration will help extend CREATE’s research on the economic consequences of and resilience to disasters in this important new direction.
Nagamatsu, S., A. Rose and J. Eyer. 2020. “Return Migration and Decontamination after the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accidents,” Risk Analysis 40(4): 800-17. doi.org/10.1111/risa.13432
Rose, A., S. Nagamatsu, and B. Djavadi. 2025. “Toward a Theory of Population Return from Disasters: A Synthesis and Extension of Research Advances,” Economics of Disasters and Climate Change 9: 209-33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41885-025-00175-7
