Events
DPRI International Seminar - Recent Water Related Disasters in East Asia -
the Global COE Program "Global Center for Education and Research on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities"
Date: December 7, 2010
Venue: Large Conference Room (D-1518), Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University
Organized by:
Disaster Risk Management Group (DPRI), the Global COE Program "Global Center for Education and Research on Human Security Engineering for Asian Megacities"
Number of attendants: about 30
Report 130
Outline
Recently, in Asian countries, flood disasters seem severer with the urbanization and the climate change and associated extreme weather. In 2010, China suffered many water related disasters such as sediment disasters in the mountainous areas and flood events in the medium and small rivers. In 2009, a very severe flood disaster occurred in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan. The development of accurate prediction methods on flood and suitable countermeasures against it are very important tasks from the point of view of disaster prevention and reduction.
In this seminar, we invited two Chinese researchers and discussed about recent water related disasters in China and Japan and their suitable countermeasures.
Report
In the seminar, Prof. Kobayashi of Kyoto University, Prof. Yuan of Tianjin University and Dr. Wang of IWHR made impressive presentations.
Prof. Kobayashi gave us an interesting presentation whose title was "Flood disaster analysis of Japan using a distributed rainfall-runoff/flood inundation simulation". First, he introduced the outline of integrated river basin model that he has developed. The model comprises runoff model, river flow model and 2-D inundation model. He also introduced the economic loss estimation model. Next, he showed the application results of his river basin model and economic loss estimation model to Ryuou Town in Shiga Prefecture and Sayo Town in Hyogo Prefecture. In addition, he introduced the workshop activities of Ryuou Town on flood studies.
Prof. Yuan made the presentation on "Situation of mountain flood disasters and middle and small river basin management in China". First, he introduced the recent situation of mountain flood disasters in China. Especially, severe flood and debris flow disaster in Zhonqu County were explained in details, which was so impressive and surprising to us. Then, he showed the countermeasure plans that China considers. They comprise (1) disasters control experimental area construction, (2) middle and small river basins management plan, and (3) special plan of mountain flood and geological disasters of China.
Dr. Wang made the presentation on "Urban inundation problem, flood simulation technology and its application in China". First, she introduced the recent urban inundation events in China and their characteristics. Next, she explained about the integrated simulation model for urban storm flood risk analysis that her institute developed. Then she showed the application results to Jinan City and other cities. She also introduced the studies of flood prevention warning system based on the simulation model. We were impressed that her work was much elaborated.
We had a very good discussion after each presentation. Many graduate students including foreign students who study at DPRI joined the seminar. Foreign students seem very interested in the recent researches on both China and Japan.
Many of water related disaster problems are similar in China and Japan though their scale is different. It is important that both Chinese and Japanese researchers have much more collaboration on them in the future.
