Title: A university information system made robust against natural disasters by taking advantage of remotely distributed campuses

Authors: Hiroshi Noguchi; Yasuhiro Ohtaki; Masaru Kamada

Addresses: Center for Information Technology, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, 316-8511, Japan ' Center for Information Technology, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, 316-8511, Japan ' Department of Computer and Information Sciences and Center for Information Technology, Ibaraki University, Hitachi, 316-8511, Japan

Abstract: We present an information system designed for a university on the basis of its experiences with the 2011 East Japan earthquake. This system has two levels of security: 1) The website for public relations and the e-mail systems for communications that will work continuously even in the case of commercial power failure. 2) The personal computer systems that will be down during power failure but will restart working without any loss of data as soon as the power supply is back. The former has been implemented by employing a private cloud computing platform and a public one in combination. The latter is implemented by a file storage system that keeps the original copy on-premise in a campus and its backup copy in one of the other campuses. Its operations have shown that the communication traffic among the campuses increased only by half in order to keep the data safe against natural disasters.

Keywords: disaster robustness; business continuity planning; distributed data backup; emergency planning; university information systems; higher education; natural disasters; remote campuses; earthquakes; Japan; data safety; data security; websites; public relations; email systems; power failure; personal computer systems; cloud computing; file storage systems; emergency management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSC.2016.080281

International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2016 Vol.6 No.3, pp.147 - 154

Received: 01 Dec 2015
Accepted: 29 May 2016
Published online: 10 Nov 2016 *

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