Yoshio Kajitani is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at Kagawa University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Kyoto University in 2004. Previously, Dr. Kajitani had received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Kyoto University in 1997 and a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) in 1999. His research focuses on disaster risk management, especially on the socioeconomic impacts of natural hazards. His academic interests include the applications of statistics, economics, and transportation and utility engineering to the field of disaster reduction and recovery. He received the Sir Richard Stone Prize from the International Input–Output Association for his paper validating the spatial computable general equilibrium model in a real disaster. He has conducted numerous post-disaster business surveys in Japan. Some of his current research on COVID-19 integrates open mobility (cellphone location) data, employment data, and economic modeling to quantify tradeoffs between mobility restrictions and economic impacts (See Kajitani et al. (2023) in the journal Risk Analysis). To him, the BRIDGE project is a great opportunity to expand his analysis in the Japanese case to international contexts thorough interdisciplinary discussions and business data collections in different cities in the world.

Contact Dr. Kajitani: kajitani.yoshio@kagawa-u.ac.jp