Events
Kick off Symposium of KU-HSE, GCOE, Mumbai Base, on Integrated Disaster Risk Management: Hot Spot Mega City Mumbai
Date: March 16 - 17, 2009
Venue: West End Hotel, Mumbai, India
Organized by:
- Kyoto University Global COE Program "Global Center for Education and Research on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities"
- Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan
- Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Mumbai India
- School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, India
Workshop Schedule 027
Report 027
Outline
The workshop, "Kick off Symposium of Ku-HSE, GCOE, Mumbai Base on Integrated Disaster Risk Management: Hot-Spot Megacity, Mumbai. In total five educational and implementing intuitions and organizations participated in the two days workshop in Mumbai. The workshop focused on issues, technologies and methods in order to share critical knowledge with officials and experts within the three participating institutions in the collaboration and also with selected experts from outside. This activity helped and will help to refine thoughts on disaster risks mitigation and management actions in Mumbai and also help to develop a network among reputed experts in disaster risk management in India and Japan.
In total 28 presentations were made. There were 11 presentations by experts from Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), 2 each by School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi and Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) and 1 from Earthquake Megacity Initiative (EMI) and 12 presentations from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM).
The workshop was organized focusing on different areas of concerned of disaster risks management of Mumbai and other megacities. The areas of discussion was differentiated into 7 sessions.
Report
Welcome Inaugural Address: The Challenge
Welcome speech was made by H. Tatano, professor of Kyoto University and leader of GCOE Mumbai Project. The workshop was inaugurated by K. Gajbhiye, Additional Municipal Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) on behalf of Jairaj Pathak, Municipal Commissioner, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The challenges of disaster management and planning of the Mumbai city were raised and mentioned.
Opening Dialogue: The Focal Areas of Concern
This section focuses on the issues and challenges of disaster risks management in the megacities, particularly on Mumbai city. The experts and scholars mentioned about the gap between the knowledge and implantation of the knowledge and technology to enhance the coping capacity of the community to fight with various disaster risks. The possible and potential mechanism of implantation of knowledge were broadly discussed, ideas and views were shared. Opening dialogue presentations set the content and tempo of the workshop appropriately focusing on three key areas where the collaboration should concentrate on to benefit Mumbai as well as the knowledge of integrated disaster risk management.
Hot-Spots: Diagnosis and Action
The section focused more on the micro and macro level disaster risks in Mumbai city. The scholars had shown the city's level of vulnerability risks and suggested the possible action plans to cope up such risks both at macro and micro level. The well documented and informative presentation along with critical views enrich our knowledge on real life disaster risks.
Kick-off Meeting: Intervention Technologies
The aim, scope of the project and expected or proposed role of each collaborative agencies were the major area of focus of this session. Prof. Tatano highlighted the aim and objectives of the GCOE Mumbai project. He also mentioned about the role and possible contribution of the DPRI GCOE. A lucid presentation of him showed how the expertise and knowledge of DPRI, Kyoto University may help the MCGM to become pro-active to fight with various disaster risks the city is facing and will face in near future. The structure and plan of the project in order to make the plan become implementable were also discussed. Mr. Shinde, Joint Commissioner, MCGM clearly pointed out the need of MCGM to enhance its disaster management response. Prof. A. K. Sharma on behalf of Prof. Ranjit Mitra, Director, School of Planning and Architecture pointed out the expertise of the SPA, the knowledge of his institution in city and country planning and what extent such knowledge may contribute to the project. Other two experts also mentioned about the significance of the project not only in respect of the Mumbai, but also in order to develop a total knowledge of city planning and management to get a safe and secured city.
Academic Exchange Session: Adaptive Technologies
This section were divided into two parts and 11 professionals and experts have presented their academic and research works. In the first part, presenters from DPRI have explained and presented their developed research outcome, knowledge, technology which are greatly recognized as the mechanism and tool for disaster prevention and mitigation. Presentation including flood evacuation simulation model, disaster risks management technologies for building showed the potentiality of level of developed knowledge in disaster risks management. It was observed that their technology is not only significant in Japan, but throughout the world. Focused is placed on building technology. Researchers from SPA have also shown their developed knowledge particularly in respect of land use planning and disaster risks management.
Technology Adaptation & Implementation Issues
This session was full of practical knowledge. Engineers and officers from MCGM showed the ground level challenges to mitigate various risks like flood, landslide, as well as earthquake. The presentations gave us about the nature of vulnerability, risks, the level of implementation of various developed disaster management tool. The focus was placed more at micro level. 8 presentations from the MCGM gave a very detailed idea about Mumbai and about its disaster risks. The initiatives made by MCGM were also discussed.
Technology Adaptation Tools
This session was focused on newly developed cutting edge tools developed to prevent disaster. The session explained and showed the tools like Coalition-proof Inspection System in Building Construction, Integrated Flood Risk Communication Support System, Seismic Retrofitting Strategies for Historic URM Buildings etc.
In total, the event not only facilitated sharing of expert knowledge related to disaster risks management among those present , it also provided the opportunity to develop a very fruitful network for collaboration among experts drawn from Japan and India. It has also very significantly brought the to the front the actual need of MCGM to enhance, both in quality and quantity, its disaster mitigation response and underlined the possible inputs from DPRI, and SPA to achieve the objective as well. In addition, we conducted media conference and our activity was introduced in Mumbai through mass media.
