Blog

Severe salinity contamination in drinking water and associated human health hazards increase migration risk in the southwestern coastal part of Bangladesh

2019-04-04 Research Topics

Bangladesh is a deltaic country and it is highly vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise. The southwestern part of this country is repeatedly devastated by cyclonic storm surges which create long-term waterlogging, flooding’s, and salinity problems. After the cyclone Sidr in 2007 and Aila in 2009, salinity problems in groundwater have significantly increased where groundwater is a principal source of drinking water in the coastal community. After the continuing consequences of salinity contamination and consumption of those types of water, local peoples are suffering from several types of health diseases. Average household health expenditure is significantly increased and it exerts more pressure on their vulnerable household economy. Thus, …

Time series plotting using hvPlot

2019-03-23 Python

hvPlot, a component of PyViz ia a new interactive plotting tool, which is a wrapper of Bokeh. hvPlot is easy to customize plotting options. However, currently there are some drawbacks, such as difficulty in adjusting aspect ratio of graph area, which may be resolved in Bokeh 1.1, slow processing, and cumbersome in exporting high resolution PNG file, comparing to Matplotlib. Default time series plotting Suppose df is a pandas DataFrame having a time series index and columns of ‘kion’ and ‘sped’, which are actually a dataset of air temperature and wind speed at Chiba Observatory, Japan, provided by Japan Meteorological Agency. import hvplot.pandas df[[‘kion’,’sped’]].hvplot() Customized plotting Now one column of …

2019.2.19-24 Field survey on coastal zone management in Marawila, Sri Lanka

2019-02-25 World Travel

Field survey on coastal erosion and its local perception in Marawila Coast, Sri Lanka, was performed collaborating with University of East London, Yokohama National University, and CC&CRMD (Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management Department, Sri Lanka). We got interviewed for National Television (Rupawahini), Sri Lanka, which was broadcast nationwide in the evening on February 23. We also interviewed the head of Negombo Fishing Union on their perception of the coastal management.

Disappearance of sand spit in Kalutara, Sri Lanka

2019-02-23 World Travel

Karutara situated in the south of Colombo in Sri Lanka is famous for its Bodiya Temple. It is also famous for the sand spit formed in the mouth of the Kalu Ganga River. As of 22 February 2019, this sand spit is clearly shown in Google Map. However, in order to secure a drainage function in the flood in 2017, the sand spit on the north side was cut, resulting in collapse of the sand spit. Although it is said that there are similar examples in the past, this time it is considered to be a big social problem because the sand spit of Karutara’s symbolic existence has not been …

Visiting University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

2019-02-20 World Travel

We visited University of Moratuwa on Feb 18, 2019. University of Moratuwa is a leading university in engineering, located south of Colombo and Mount Lavinia. We have been studying on coastal erosion management in Marawila collaborating with University of East London, Yokohama National University, and CC&CRMD (Coast Conservation and Coastal Resources Management Department). One of our activities was broadcasted by Sri Lankan national TV program and a professor from University of Moratuwa incidentally watched the program and contacted me. We also visited Dr. Nimal and Dr. Udeni, alumni of Yokohama National University.

Lab’s welcome and year-end party

2018-12-30 Lab activities

On December 20, 2018, it was totally late, but we held a lab’s welcome party for new students enrolled in September (Graduate Students) and in October (Research Students) as well as a year-end party. Wish you a happy new year!

Field survey on spawning ground of marbled flounder in off-Akanehama, Tokyo Bay

2018-12-25 Domestic Travel World Travel

The project team for creation of habitat under the Public-Private Cooperation Forum for Tokyo Bay Restoration performed a field survey on spawning ground for marbled flounder collaborating with Chiba Prefectural Fishery Research Center in off-Akanehama of Tokyo Bay on December 25, 2018. The project team proposed a project for creation of spawning ground of marbled flounder and this survey is based on this project.

ENPC-UTokyo Joint Workshop

2018-12-04 Research Topics

ENPC-UTokyo Joint Workshop was held on December 3, 2018, at the University of Tokyo. ENPC or Ecole des Ponts ParisTech is the best university or graduate level school in France. One of the major topics is about water quality problems in Odaiba Seashore Park, Tokyo Port in Tokyo Bay, where long-distance swimming games and triathlon games are going to be performed in the 2020 Olympic-Paralympic games. This is also a common topic in Seine river in Paris where the 2024 Olympic-Paralympic games are going to be held. In Sasaki’s lab, collaborating with ENPC, countermeasures against the water quality problem in Odaiba Seashore Park will be studied by employing numerical computation …

Invited visit at Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

2018-11-29 World Travel

Dr. Sasaki was invited by School of Environment, Beijing Normal University (BNU) from November 26 to 29, 2018. BNU leads in the field of environmental studies in China. There are a couple of best universities in Beijing, including Tsinghua University and Beijing University, among them, BNU is located in the most central part of Beijing downtown. Coastal environmental studies group in BNU leads studies on coastal wetland vegetation and bay environments. Their main fields are Yellow River delta, Yangtze River delta, and Pearl River delta (near Hong Kong), and they also have their local research facilities at these sites. BNU is also equipped with state-of-the-art experimental facilities, including constant air …