Events
DPRI Seminar - Recent Studies on Urban Flood Disasters -
Date: August 19, 2009
Venue: Director Office, Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan
Organized by:
- Disaster Risk Management Group (DPRI)
- Kyoto University Global COE Program "Global Center for Education and Research on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities"
Number of attendants: about 20
Report 054
Outline
Recently, in Asian megacities, severe urban flood disasters occur frequently due to heavy rainfall, typhoon and their overlap by climate change and associated extreme weather. How to make countermeasures against urban flood is one of the most important tasks from the point of view of disaster prevention and reduction.
In this seminar, several recent studies related to urban flood disasters are introduced and their prediction method and suitable countermeasures are discussed.
Report
In the seminar, three presentations were conducted by Prof. Ishigaki, Prof. Yoneyama and Prof.Toda.
Prof. Ishigaki gave us a kind of keynote lecture whose title was "Potential Risks and Evacuation in Urban Floods", He introduced the characteristics of recent urban floods in Japan, especially inundation due to heavy rainfall for a very short time and subsequent underground inundation. He also showed recent experimental researches on evacuation by use of full scale models of staircase, door and car., and demonstrated the importance of prompt and suitable evacuation.
Prof. Yoneyama made the presentation on "Three Dimensional Numerical Simulation for Inundation Disasters". He explained about his 3-D computational codes and showed the interesting simulation results of inundation water behavior at basement and drift behavior in Tsunami Run-up.
Prof. Toda made the presentation on "Study on Traffic Difficulties Caused by Urban Flood Inundation". He showed the degree and characteristics of traffic difficulties caused by urban inundation by heavy rainfall in Kyoto City, Japan, by combining the inundation analysis and the traffic assignment analysis. It was found that the inundation at the southwest of studied area has an effect on the traffic network all over the city.
We had a very fruitful discussion time after each presentation. Many graduate students including foreign students who study at DPRI joined the seminar. Foreign students seem very impressed with the recent researches on urban flood. Several young engineers who work at private companies also participated in the seminar.
