Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 1

Along with now graduated Dr. Nasif Ahsan, I was invited to give a lecture to our new M.Sc. students as part of the course "Basic Concepts of Integrated Flood Risk management (IFRM)". This part of the course centers around the Pressure and Release (PAR) model, as developed by Ben Wisner, Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, and Ian Davis in their publication "At Risk: natural hazards, people’s vulnerability and disasters" (Routledge, London & NY, 2004). 

The concept behind the PAR model is that disasters occurs when societal vulnerability coincides with (natural) hazards.The only way to reduce risk is reduction of vulnerability, rather than the hazard itself. This concept is explained in the images below.

For the lecture we each focused on how the PAR model could be applied to our home countries, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. I added an interactive component in which the students developed their own version of the PAR model for floods in the Netherlands.

 

News in Japan - July

Japan

Joso city video and fund raiser (Japanese)

USA

Scientists release recommendations for building land in coastal Louisiana Sediment diversions should be operated on a pulse that mimics the natural flood cycle of the Mississippi River, which includes taking full advantage of winter flood peaks from November through February when the greatest concentration of sediment is available in the river to sustain the coastal wetlands, as well as operating in the spring when sand needed for building land is at its highest. Operations plans should include robust monitoring and flexibility for adjustments based on rapidly changing conditions, such as hurricanes and other events.

A recent collaborative research effort seeks to highlight this enclave of stability against the stark reality of Louisiana's predominantly sediment-starved, sinking deltaic systems.

 Mixed response: Floodwaters return to the Colorado River but can release greenhouse gases Deliberately flooding riverbeds left parched by dams has great potential to restore wetlands but may also have a significant unintended consequence: the release of greenhouse gases. When a large dry riverbed is flooded, these greenhouse gases are released into the water, and presumably to the atmosphere. However, re-wetting the delta may support the growth of native plants, which typically are better able to absorb and store carbon than invasive species, and may offset the carbon dioxide and methane released by flooding.

California droughts caused mainly by changes in wind, not moisture

Netherlands

Dutch parliament adopts unique risk standards for flood protection

Other

Mitigating floods with an electronic brain Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are a biologically-inspired method of computing that can receive large amounts of data, find patterns, learn from them and then develop predictions for future events. They have been proposed as a useful tool to process the complex relationships between large amounts of data related to the transformation of rainfall into runoff. This relationship is one of the most difficult hydrological problems faced by water resource managers. Researchers at Universiti Putra Malaysia "taught" an ANN to predict daily runoff for the Bertam River into the Ringlet Reservoir 200 km north of Kuala Lumpur. They collected daily rainfall and stream flow data from the Bertam River catchment area over a ten-year period, from 2003 to 2012, and estimated daily water evaporation using temperature data collected from the nearest station to the reservoir. Seventy percent of this data was input into the model to "train" it while the remaining 30% of the data was used to test the model's accuracy using statistical evaluation measurements. The ANN was developed to map the relationship between rainfall and runoff. The more factors used, the more accurate the results. The ANN was able to predict river stream flow into the reservoir with 76% accuracy.

Model for predicting coastal storm damage in the North Sea (UK)

Sustainable Cities: Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Design (video)

Consortium to build flood warning system for all Balkan countries along Sava river

RESTORING NATURAL DEFENSES TO HELP COMMUNITIES IN COASTAL FLOODPLAINS ADAPT TO CLIMATE CHANGE

ICWRER day 2

The second day of the International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research in Kyoto featured two keynote speeches. The first, from Prof. Hubert Savenije from the Dutch Delft University of Technology, touched upon drought models and root zone storage. He explained how different drought models led to opposite results for the Netherlands, and a local model often functioned better than a global one. He further set out his theory how most of the traditional ground storage models did not account for root storage correctly. These models assume that plants would use the entire soil depth to grow roots in, when in practice this was not the optimal growth strategy for plants. In fact, especially in moist areas, there is no need for plants to have deep roots as they can already gather enough moisture from the top soil layer, and then invest more in growing above ground. 

Asian Water Cycle Symposium 2016 (AWCS2016) - Day 2

Day 2 of the Asian Water Cycle Symposium began with a drought session featuring former ICHARM member Dr. Ali Chavoshian, who is now Director of the RCUWM in Iran. Given the high number of people affected by droughts, an Integrated Drought Monitoring/Prediction System in West and Central Asia is promoted. This system will:

1. Providing drought information based on multiple indicators and data sources including satellite observations and local ground-based data.
2. Providing multi-model multi-index seasonal drought prediction information for the region.  
3. Develop a user-friendly system for dissemination of the Drought information. 

PhD student Yohei Sawada from the Tokyo University introduced a monitoring system including the Leaf Area Index.

News in Japan - March

GEJET
Four years on from the Tsunami
Rebuilding trust after the Fukushima disaster
Transfer of tainted Fukushima soil starts
Aftershocks continue 4 years after giant quake There were more than 8,100 aftershocks in the first year after the quake. This fell to about 1,600 by the second year, and about 1,000 by the third. 
Japan marks 4th anniversary of 3/11 disaster The government says nearly 230,000 people were still living in temporary housing as of February. It plans to build about 30,000 public housing units, but only 19 percent of them have been completed so far.
Public housing for Fukushima facing delays Fukushima Prefecture plans to build around 2,700 units for people affected by the earthquake and tsunami. 4,900 are planned for those affected by the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. But only 44 percent of the units for quake and tsunami victims were ready for occupancy at the end of February. Only 5 percent has been completed for the nuclear evacuees. Prefectural officials say they are having difficulty securing land to build the housing. They say there is also a shortage of construction workers amid the growth in reconstruction-related demands. The officials say it will take until 2018 or later to finish building all the units for the nuclear accident refugees.
The ongoing fallout from Japan’s nuclear meltdown Scientists are saying there is a 70 per cent chance that a magnitude 7.0 or higher quake will hit Tokyo by 2016 and a 98 per cent chance it will hit in the next 30 years. As reminder: Tokyo 'has 70% chance of powerful earthquake within four years' The earthquake research institute at Tokyo University said that in the worst case, a quake of magnitude 7 would hit the southern part of metropolitan Tokyo by 2016, while the chances of a similar disaster occurring within 30 years are as high as 98%. The government, by contrast, estimates the possibility of an earthquake that size striking the capital at 70% in the next three decades.

Japan

Shimizu Corp. unveils advanced earthquake lab

Netherlands

Dutch minister Schultz chair World Bank Advisory Board of Global Water Practice

Dutch government establishes response team to advise on water emergency situations

USA
Flood and drought risk to cities on rise even with no climate change (USA)

Other

India's "smart cities" would be stupid without disaster strategy

Youth-led disaster alerts protect Sri Lankan tsunami village

Flooding in Madagascar's capital kills 14, uproots thousands

Mekong Delta Plan Vietnam (WUR, Deltares) 

How rivers creep, flow to shape landscapes over time

Predicting the extent of flash flooding

Rapid coastal population growth may leave many exposed to sea-level rise

Ten-year review finds 87% of disasters climate-related
Aqueduct Global Flood Analyzer

Vulnerable people
Japanese women at a crossroads The number of married women in their 20s who think women should stay at home and focus on housework has risen from 35.7% in 2003 to 41.6% in 2013 Two thirds of them think mothers shouldn't be back at work until the children are three years old, and about the same percentage of women give up their jobs after having their first child.

WCDRR day 3

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai - day 3

In the middle of this conference I was able to visit 5 events on this day. The first was a technical session on the methods used in the Global Assessment Report 2015 at Tohoku university. The second and third took place at the International Center and covered financial aspects of disaster risk reduction. Another session there covered land use planning, while the last, at Tohoku university, was a very special session about the formation of a Delta Alliance, initiated by the Dutch government and attended by one of the Dutch princesses. 

WCDRR day 2

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai - day 2

Today I visited 4 sessions, the first three at the Sendai international conference building and the last at Tohoku University, located on a beautiful hill side, at Hagi hall (presentations will follow). The hagi tree is the symbol of the university.

My main question during the presentation of the Global Assessment Report 2015 was how the work of the GAR differs from ICHARM's goal to make a risk index. The main points include ICHARM's focus on flood hazards, end point indicators of governance and resilience of communities, and the national level and cooperation with national governments in creating and applying the index data.

News in Japan - July

GEJET
Fukushima Watch: Lawmakers Rank the Safety of Japan’s 50 Reactors
Japan's atomic disaster due to "collusion:" panel report
Quake left 20-meter crack in Fuji

Massive anti-nuclear power rally held in Tokyo

Fukushima reopens first beach to swimming since nuclear disaster

Japan’s tsunami towns go green to create jobs, bypass nuclear

Japan reviews nuclear plant sites as faultline worries mount

Japan utility takes out 2 Fukushima nuke fuel rods

Radioactive strontium detected in 10 prefectures

Japan

Torrential rain in Kyushu spurs evacuation advisories

Average income of households in 2010 down to 1988 level

A Lost Deal for South Korea and Japan

Govt looks to buy Senkakus / Noda says talks with islands' owner have already begun In 1971, the Taiwanese and Chinese governments officially began to declare ownership of the islands after the U.N. issued a report about possible gas and oil reserves in the Senkaku area. 

Japan's battered men suffer abuse in silence

Japan agency says high chance El Nino to emerge this summer

Japanese town selling land for pocket change

50,000 flee as record rain in Japan kills 10

Japan's low-profile military steps up during flood rescue (+video)

Death toll at 27 in Japan floods

More couples seek to select child gender / 90 couples went to Thailand for diagnosis in '12

Japan best place to be a child, India ranking poor

Rain ends in Kyushu, Yamaguchi

Heatstroke patients doubled last week

Japan report finds Hong Kong women have overtaken Japanese as longest living
Volcano erupts in Japan, showers nearby Kagoshima City with rocks and ash

Netherlands

Hindrances due to bad weather (Dutch)

Other
More than half of female workers are employed on nonregular basis

Russian floods

Drought in USA, Drought Monitor USA

Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt     

Discovery's Building the Future

Discovery Channel had a series, Building the Future, also touching on the South-North Water Diversion Project in China, and the Edogawa Project in Japan. More information here.

South-North Water Diversion Project (Beijing, China) (#1)

Beijing, with a population that has swelled to nearly 15 million people, is struggling with an increasingly dire water shortage worsened by 30 years of drought. The Chinese government's answer is the largest water diversion undertaking ever. First envisioned by Mao Zedong in the early 1950s but not begun until 2002, the project will transport 300 million gallons of water each day from the Yangtze River in southern China to the parched, populous north via three concrete rivers, each nearly 1,000 miles long. (The most difficult part of the project will be the western route, which will require construction on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at 10,000 to 16,000 feet above sea level.) Plans call for the project to be completed by 2050 at a cost of $62 billion. But whether it will be enough to alleviate China's water woes is a difficult question. Experts say that even with the extra water, the Chinese capital will have to dramatically reduce average household water consumption just to keep up with population growth. Another problem: pollution from China's rapidly growing industrial sector threatens to make the diverted water unfit to drink.

Edogawa River Project (Tokyo, Japan) (#2)
With Tokyo in the path of as many as two dozen typhoons each year, the city and its 12 million inhabitants are continually endangered by flooding. The answer: one of the most massive pumping systems ever constructed. Begun in 1992, with completion scheduled for 2009, the $2 billion system includes a four-mile-long network of tunnels connected to an 83-foot-tall storage tank and a cathedral-like structure of 59 massive pillars. The system's powerful turbines can pump 200 tons of water into the Edogawa River each second. The system has become a Tokyo tourist attraction, and it also has been used by television and movie crews as an eerily dramatic backdrop.