Prof. Okada is a full professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, where he is part of the Group of Integrated Management for Disaster Risk.
Born in 1947, Okada holds a master degree and PhD in Civil Engineering from Kyoto University.
His professional experience includes a 2-year stay as Research Scholar at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, and one year as Visiting Scholar at the East-West Center in Honolulu, USA. Professor Okada’s main research activities
focus on Integrated Disaster Risk Management as well as on what has been coined "implementation science". He is one of the originators of the NEXUS-IDRiM Initiative, which is a network of researchers and practitioners dedicated to implementing Integrated Disaster Risk Management.
He has received a honorius causa (honorary degree of engineering) from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Prof Okada currently holds the positions of Visiting Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University and Changchun Normal University, both in the People’s Republic of China.