Contribution to Humanism Recognised

The Czech Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing has recognised professor Shunji Murai’s contribution to humanism with his book, Higher Ground: Learning from the East Japan Tsunami and Meltdown at Fukushima NPS, by presenting him with an award during the 22nd ISPRS Congress in Melbourne, Australia, on 26 August 2012.

Lena Halounová,  president of the Czech Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and candidate congress director for the 23^rd ISPRS Congress, explains why she took up the initiative to honour the Japanese professor for his book: “11 March 2011 changed the lives of many people in Japan. Many people in Central Europe had first learned what the word ‘tsunami’ could mean in 2006, and just five years later whole world heard about a similar catastrophe. Watching the images on television is terrible; you cross your fingers for those who survived and for the whole country.  However, such images are brief and you soon move on and become involved in other everyday things around you.  The book written by professor Shunji Murai presents the scale of the entire tragedy in detail. It is a book with thousands of cases of individual human tragedy, a book summarising the disaster in numbers and providing us and the country itself with ‘lessons’ we can learn from this experience to avoid such impact in the future. Once you start reading, you will find it hard to put it down.”