ICWRER day 3

I presented today, on the final conference day of the International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research. But first we enjoyed a keynote speech from Mathias Kondolf from the University of California, Berkeley, who talked about "Maintaining and Restoring Sediment Load Downstream of Dams". This included the tedious and costly process of re-sedimentation on the Rhine river, and current geomorphic impacts on the Mekong Delta. 

Presentations from ICHARM members included the assessment of disaster damage due to flood hazard in the Indonesian Solo river basin (Shrestha),  evidence based contingency planning for local government officers (Ohara), how hazard preparedness training enhances household resilience (Ahsan).

Other presentations today covered social vulnerability assessment, infrastructure vulnerability, water security assessment. 

During one of the final sessions, named Environmental Management Enhancing Ecosystem Services and chaired by Prof. Yasuhiro Takemon from Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute, I presented on "The Benefits of Cyclones as Ecosystem Services".  I was extremely happy to receive many relevant questions and comments from the audience, and a widespread acknowledgement of the importance of this topic for future research. These will be taken into account in the final paper submission for the journal of Global Environmental Change.