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The Earthquake Research Institute operates a WWW to disseminate information of current various activities in earthquake and volcano researches and educations that have been carries out. In addition, a number of available dataset such as earthquake catalogues, broadband waveforms, and geomagnetic data have also been opened for public access. Figure 1 shows the top page of our WWW (http://www.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp).

 

Fig.1 The top page of the WWW at the Earthquake Research Institute

 

 

Open Lectures held by ERI

 

    The pyroclastic flow at Mt. Unzen in 1991 and the Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake in 1995 remind the Japanese people that there have been many natural disasters caused by large earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In 1992, the ERI began "Open lectures" as well as "Open house", for public people who are interested in on seismology, 　volcanology and Earth science. The open lectures are held once a year, and the eleventh one was held on July 25, 2002. The program of the lecture is advertised through newspapers, posters, web-site and direct mail to public offices, organizations concerned and schools.

    Every time, audience of more than several hundreds attend the open lecture not only from Tokyo and its neighboring prefectures (Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama), but also from remote areas like Kinki, Chugoku and Kyushu. The ages of participants widely range from 10's through 80's. Occupations of the participants are students in college, high school or junior high school, teachers, especially in earth science, public servants and researchers, for example in charge of disaster prevention, and others. We hope that some of the student audience will be interested and join in the field of research activities in our Institute.

    Most of the audience was satisfied with the open lecture, although some requested that the contents of the lecture be more intelligible and well explained in the distributed booklets. We are going to make efforts to improve the contents of the open lectures.

 

 

 

Open House

    The Earthquake Research Institute holds an "Open House" every year. This is for the public announcement of various research activities in all the fields that have been carried out in the institute. The 9-th Open House was held July 27-28th, 2002, with the main theme of "Messages from the Earth" and about seven hundred people visited the institute. The methods of obserbations and researches and the latest scientific results were presented using graphic panels, visual experiments and computers. A number of visitors were especially interested in a special booth on the expected Tokai earthquake and volcanic activities of Mt. Fuji and asked many questions to the staff of the institute. Simple model experiments prepared and conducted by graduate students also attracted visitors of all generations. We need to keep upgrading the contents of the Open House as well as those of the web site of the institute.

Photo 1. Visitors are watching a model experiment.