Institute Professor
Research and Development Initiative,
Chuo University, Kasuga, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Dr. Hiroaki Furumai is an Institute Professor of the Research and Development Initiative, Chuo University. He has conducted research on 1) Sustainable urban drainage management focusing on flood control and wet weather pollution, 2) Control of microbial function in water treatment and microbial community in water distribution system, 3) Management of unregulated organic matter in water environment and water use. He established a research unit at Chuo University in April 2022 and started the research mainly on advancement of urban drainage management. He received his doctoral degree in 1984 from the University of Tokyo. He was a member of Board of Director of International Water Association (IWA) since 2012 and then organized the World Water Congress and Exhibition at Tokyo in 2018. He is an IWA Distinguished Fellow after working as IWA fellow 2010. He was a vice president (2014-2017), the president (2016-2017) and is now an advisor (2017- ) of the Japan Society on Water Environment. He is the co-Editors-in-Chief of Journal of Water and Environment Technology. He contributed to several scholarly journals as an editor, including Water Research and Urban Water Journal. He was the project leader of the research project entitled by “Development of well-balanced urban water use system adapted to climate change”, which is financially supported by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). In the project, they focus on safe and stable water supply in highly-populated metropolitan areas in Asia. Climate change and increased water demand through rapid urbanization have caused more severe water scarcity. Concern about the sustainability of urban water use is the strong motivation to understand the potential use of rainwater and reclaimed water in urbanized cities. He conducted the JST research project entitled by “Real-time Prediction and Control of Urban Flood Risk”. The project realizes the advanced control of urban drainage facilities based on integrated management of river and drainage networks by developing a novel inundation forecast model that can integrate meteorological observation and rainfall forecast information.