Dr. Kazuhiro Kitazawa from Japan is for more than 30 years associated with the IOC. Since 1980 he served as a member of the IOC secretariat and made a vast contribution to the development of the basis of the IOC “self-driven” capacity building approach in almost all major IOC programmes. Being by education a marine geophysicist he helped in extending the Pacific Tsunami Warning System to the south-western part of the Ocean. He is now a special advisor to the JAMSTEC Director. More