Land of the Rising Water: August 2013

The current five-day school week began on a once-a-month trial basis in September 1992, and was increased to twice a month in fiscal 1995. The five-day school week was fully implemented in fiscal 2002. However, education experts have blamed the five-day school week for deteriorating scores among students. They also said students are not spending their Saturdays as initially envisioned, such as participating in community activities.

Weather agency to develop new radar

The Japan Meteorological Agency plans to develop a new weather radar within the next five years to more accurately forecast torrential rain and tornadoes, agency officials said Tuesday.

The agency plans to request ¥995 million for the project in the fiscal 2014 budget, the officials said.

The plan follows heavy rain that hit the Chugoku and Tohoku regions this summer and a powerful tornado in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, in May 2012.

Torrential rain and tornadoes can occur with the buildup of cumulonimbus clouds. The envisioned new phased array radar, which comprises a number of small antennas lined up to emit radio waves, is able to record the movement of such clouds every 10 seconds, according to the officials.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Color vision deficiency

You may not be able to see all the text or figures on this website. I have not yet checked all pages for color vision deficiency (CVD) yet, while in fact quite a lot of people have some form of color vision deficiency. The following is based on information mainly from J-fly, an organisation involved with drosophilia melanogaster genes and therefore in need of preparing many colored images, which all people should be able to see.

How many people have colorblindness?

•The frequency of colorblindness is fairly high. One in twelve Caucasian (8%), one in 20 Asian (5%), and one in 25 African (4%) males are so-called "red-green" colorblind. It is commoner than AB blood group.

How could it affect your work related to disaster risk management?

•There is a good chance that the paper you submit may go to colorblind reviewers. Supposing that your paper will be reviewed by three white males (which is not unlikely considering the current population in science), the probability that at least one of them is colorblind is whopping 22%!

•People reading your publications or website cannot see all your text or figures.

•Flood Hazard Maps or other (disaster) maps cannot be read by all of the target audience.

•The audience of your presentation may not see what you are indicating on the slides, or when you use a red laser pointer.

How does it work and what do people see?

What can you do?

•Choose color schemes that can be easily identified by people with all types of color vision. Keep the

number of colors to a minimum.

•Use combinations of different symbols with a few, vivid colors rather than a single symbol with various

colors (see the example below).

•Clearly state color names where users are expected to use color names in communication.

•Avoid indicating objects only by color name. Make it possible to communicate without using color name. Describe shapes and positions.

•Use a green laser pointer, it works for both color blind and non-color blind people.

•Use a website to check if your images are visible: http://www.vischeck.com/examples/ (this site is currently down, please let me know a suitable alternative)

•Test how your website appears to colorblind people: https://www.toptal.com/designers/colorfilter

•Test yourself for colorblindness types: http://www.testingcolorvision.com /

Sources:
http://jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/
http://www.visibone.com/colorblind/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb263953(v=vs.85).aspx
http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/
wikipedia

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Presentation at the APHW Conference in Korea

Today I had a presentation at the 6th Asia Pacific Association of Hydrology and Water Resources Conference. It was held at the Korea University, in Seoul, South Korea. The presentation schedules can be viewed here.

Luckily I was accompanied by a supervisor, so we could share our astonishment on not being able to read anything around us for a change. Needless to say, the conference was excellently organized and surprisingly, we met many people from other research institutes in Japan. The title of my presentation was 'Quantifying the effectiveness of measures taken for vulnerable people in disaster risk management (DRM) in the Netherlands'. Up to now I only have the Dutch figures to display.
Ms. Min Young Kim commented on how to obtain responses from interviews with local people. In her research in Korea she had encountered much resistance and reluctance to discuss individual DRM measures. I am still in the process of developing these data gathering methods and was disappointed I would not be able to perform such local interviews myself.
However, after hearing about her difficulties I reconsidered, and I believe her experience might serve as partial justification not to conduct the interviews as I had expected quite the opposite reaction from local people.

We had only one day to stay at the conference before flying back to Tsukuba, but we did take the opportunity to enjoy the restored inner city river, which is a popular outing place for families and young adults alike. More details of this project can be found here.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Mortality figures of three big disasters by age

This figure shows the mortality rates per age category for three different major disasters in the countries Netherlands (storm surge 1953), USA (hurricane Katrina 2005) and Japan (GEJET 2011). In both the Dutch and American case, children had a higher mortality than people aged roughly 18-30. In all countries older adults have a much higher mortality, with all people aged 75 and up a rate higher than 2.3. People during hurricane Katrina in the USA aged 75 years and older even had a rate of 8.68. This calls for extra support measures aimed at older adults during both the preparation and response phases of disaster management.