The 2nd World Tsunami Museum Conference 2018

The 2nd World Tsunami Museum Conference (WTMC) 2018 will be organized in Tokyo, Japan, on 30th November 2018.

The organizers of this event are the UNISDR Office in Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), working closely with partners in Japan.

In November 2017, the first WTMC was held in Ishigaki City, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, to share knowledge and experiences among the participating tsunami museums around the world. The Conference held active discussions on key challenges and actions to effectively pass down the lessons learned from the damages caused by tsunamis to the future generations.

Considering that the year 2018 commemorates the 25th year since the Hokkaido-nansei-oki Earthquake in 1993 (230 people dead or missing), the conference this year will focus on “chronological perspectives” and discuss the evolving roles and challenges of tsunami museums at each phase of post-disaster period and onwards, as well as discussion of the efforts and activities to preserve experiences of, and lessons learned from disasters.

The WTMC is attended by a number of representatives from existing museum facilities focusing on tsunami and disaster risk reduction around the world to share their activities and contributions regarding awareness raising and DRR education, lessons learnt, good practices and future plans, and discuss the importance of and the roles of museums in preparing against tsunami.

The Conference is also expected to facilitate networking among these participating museums to learn from each other and to foster collaboration among them.