Hirokazu Tatano

Hirokazu Tatano is a professor at Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. He currently serves as a secretary general of the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes, which was established at the occasion of the second global summit of research institutes for disaster risk reduction, March 19-20, 2015, and currently has about 150 member institutes around the world.

He received master's and PhD in civil engineering from Kyoto University. Much of Tatano's research is on the economics of natural hazards. He led the socio-economic assessment survey team of the Japan Society of Civil Engineering for the East Japan Earthquake. He also served as a leader of the disaster risk management research field, Global Center of Excellence Program on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities and head of the Mumbai Base, which conducted a research program to implement community-led disaster risk reduction activities. He served as a primary investigator on a Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology grant-in-aid on disaster risk management strategy of global critical infrastructure. Tatano has done pioneering research on economic consequence analysis. Another major focus of his research has been on resilience to natural disasters at the levels of the individual business, market, and regional economy.