Kiyoo Mogi

Who is Kiyoo Mogi?

Dr Kiyoo Mogi is a prominent seismologist. He is regarded as Japan's foremost authority on earthquake prediction and is a former chair of the Japanese Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction. Mogi is also a former Director of the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute, was a professor at Nihon University and is professor emeritus at Tokyo University. Due to the seismic activity in Japan, Mogi has also taken an interest in safety of nuclear power in Japan.

In 1969 Mogi predicted that there was a possibility of a shallow magnitude 8.0 earthquake in the Tōkai region of Japan, an area that has experienced a number of previous large earthquakes. Following the passing of the Large-Scale Earthquake Countermeasure Act, in 1978 Mogi was appointed to the newly created Earthquake Assessment Committee for the expected Tokai earthquake, charged with warning the government if the quake was imminent. He went on to chair the ECA from 1991 until he resigned the post in 1996 after failing to persuade the government of the need to take uncertainty into account when issuing warnings.