Jiji Press More than two years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, universities are collecting 3-D data of tsunami-ravaged buildings and other structures before they are eventually torn down.
The move is aimed at passing the memories of the disaster to future generations.
Tohoku University and the University of Tokyo are working on the project, beginning with measurements using lasers to precisely measure structures. The same method was applied by researchers at the Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia.
So far, the Tohoku University Museum in Sendai has collected data from a fishing boat that washed up on the coast in Kesennuma in Miyagi Prefecture, and the naked frame of a municipal office building in the devastated town of Minami-Sanriku also in the prefecture, which was hit hard by the disaster.
It is possible to view 3-D images based on the data with special glasses connected to a computer.