News in Japan - December

USA

Climate change will drive stronger, smaller storms in U.S., new modeling approach forecasts

Netherlands

Dutch coast ‘superstorm’ proof for the next 50 years The embankments that protect the marina have been topped with Xblocs to break high waves. Xbloc is an innovative concrete armour unit which has been developed by Dutch contractor BAM - under its trade name Delta Marine Consultants - for shore protection and breakwaters. Xblocs have a high hydraulic stability and requires considerably less concrete compared to other armouring systems and furthermore the units can be placed faster. This is the first time Xblocs have been used along the Dutch coast.

PhD-student experimented with 10.000 plastic river plants in waterlab, the Netherlands In the main channel of the waterlab at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, PhD-student Andrés Vargas-Luna simulated the shaping of rivers including the effects of vegetation. He did this by putting 10.000 small plastic plants in the channel. "Problems arise when trying to calculate their extension as there are no models for this. It is often assumed that the land that erodes from one bank, expands the other. I want to know which role vegetation plays in the development of riverbanks.” The outcomes of his research emphasize the relevance of considering the effects of vegetation on the river management and on the designing, planning and maintaining of restoration projects.

Other

UK Winter 2015/2016 floods: One of the century's most extreme and severe flood episodes

Most UK coastal flooding caused by moderate, not extreme storms The researchers also identified four main storm track pathways approaching the UK (mainly from the westerly and northerly directions) and four broad corresponding footprints of extreme sea level events (four sections, which together, make up most of Britain's mainland coastline). Clustering of storms, such as happened during the 2013 -- 14, or even 2015 -- 16 season, is an important issue. It can lead to large socioeconomic impacts and cumulative insurance losses. Before now, knowledge of this area has been limited, but our study will help better inform flood management, the insurance sector, and national emergency and infrastructure resilience planning to minimise the impact of successive storm events. The team has also developed a new database of coastal flooding for the UK called 'SurgeWatch' (http://www.surgewatch.org) which contains records, including photographs, of coastal flooding events over the last 100 years.

New 3D world map – TanDEM-X global elevation model completed

News in Japan - November

USA:
Mississippi River could leave farmland stranded

If the Mississippi River continues to go unchecked, the farmland on Dogtooth Bend peninsula may be only accessible by boat. According to a University of Illinois study, each successive flood carves a deeper channel across the narrow neck of the peninsula. This floodwater shortcut threatens to permanently reroute the Mississippi River, leaving Dogtooth Bend an island rather than a peninsula. Repeatedly repairing the levee breaches, building a bridge over the shortcut created by the flooding, or letting the Mississippi chart its own course are some solutions to the problem.

Netherlands: 

New Dutch drama, ‘if the levees breach’: http://www.npo.nl/series/artikelen/als-de-dijken-breken

Grand scale evacuations at Marken during 'crisis practice Waterwolf' (Dutch)

Website visualizing floods in the Netherlands: http://www.overstroomik.nl/

Cadzand-Beach most closely resembles Omaha Beach (Dutch) For the first time enormous Xblocs, an innovation of construction consortium BAM, are applied in the Netherlands. They must protect the hinterland from so-called super storms that may arise from a combination of sea level rise and climate change. The probability of such a super storm is 1 percent in a hundred years. That seems low, but without proper protection the flood damages can amount to more than one hundred billion euro. The three-dimensional shapes can be linked to each other similar to Lego-blocks, so that the connection of the resulting dam becomes extra strong. But by the openness persisting between the Xblocs, the barrier absorbs the enormous power of the super waves instead of being averted. The slender palisades also reduces the required material. A ‘small’ Xbloc consists of 1.5 cubic meters of concrete, a large one of 4 cubic meters. That is only one-third of the material which would be required for massive concrete blocks of the same size. "The gaps between the Xblocs creates space for all kinds of marine life. Small micro-organisms can settle here, but also fish and crabs find shelter. We considered mixing the concrete with shell grit, so that a large surface would be created with better adherence, but that was really too expensive." Research at Rijkswaterstaat in 2003 showed that the force with which the waves hit the shore is greater than previously thought. At nine locations along the Dutch coast dunes or dikes had to be reinforced to be able to withstand a superstorm. When Minister Schultz van Haegen (Infrastructure and Environment) formally closed the work in Cadzand today, all the weak links will have been restored.

Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 3

Our students this year are a diverse group of meteorologists, engineers, government officers, hydrologists, dam operators, infrastructure analysts, and researchers, coming from Brazil, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. As such we received a great diversity of suggestions during the interactive part of the lecture. For this part, I divided the students in three groups to each work on a different type of flood affecting the Netherlands: oceanic storm surges, river floods, and heavy precipitation. 

The goal of the exercise was to develop safe conditions for each type of flood, as integrated in the PAR model. This would allow students to actively familiarize themselves with the PAR model as preparation for their course assignments, stimulate group discussions, and have them consider the cross-cultural transferability of disaster risk reduction measures.

Pressure and Release (PAR) model, part 2

To prepare students for their PAR model exercise, I explained briefly about the conditions in the Netherlands and the three types of flood we might face. Below is a selection of the presented slides. 

I developed a pressure model for floods in the Netherlands as shown below (click to enlarge). It was up to the students to develop safe conditions to increase the progression of safety, countering a different type of flood in the Netherlands.

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 - June

USA

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? Researchers look for ways to predict response to hurricane evacuation orders (USA)

"Social and environmental cues influence behavior," said Sarah DeYoung, postdoctoral researcher at DRC who was the lead author of that paper and has just accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Georgia. "But we understand, too, the temporal nature of that," Davidson said. "It's not like people make a decision on Day 1 and follow through with that. They see what happens and change their minds, too."

Flooding kills at least 23 in West Virginia (USA)

New study shows impact of human-made structures on Louisiana's coastal wetlands - Researchers use satellite data to quantify wetland loss

Netherlands

https://twitter.com/Du_Knitter/status/738237664948834304/photo/1 Dutch A74 highway closed due to flood/mudflow.

Other

Sudden onset of storm in Germany as viewed from racetrack

Heavy rain in Germany leads to 4 deaths (Dutch) Over 40 people were rescued from life threatening situations. One of the four victims was a male firefighter. The weekend before 35 people were struck by lightning.

Thousands of evacuations due to floods in France (Dutch) Over 5,500 people were evacuated, firefighters responded to 10,500 calls for help, and one 86 year old woman reportedly drowned.

Europe flooding: Five dead as waters rise in Germany and France

El Nino made a nuisance of itself in 2015
Parts of Philippines may submerge due to global warming
New data set establishes global flood risks more accurately (Dutch)

Vulnerable people

Revamped labor guidelines to issue sterner warning against LGBT discrimination (Japan)

News in Japan - June

USA

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? Researchers look for ways to predict response to hurricane evacuation orders (USA)

"Social and environmental cues influence behavior," said Sarah DeYoung, postdoctoral researcher at DRC who was the lead author of that paper and has just accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Georgia. "But we understand, too, the temporal nature of that," Davidson said. "It's not like people make a decision on Day 1 and follow through with that. They see what happens and change their minds, too."

Flooding kills at least 23 in West Virginia (USA)

New study shows impact of human-made structures on Louisiana's coastal wetlands - Researchers use satellite data to quantify wetland loss

Netherlands

https://twitter.com/Du_Knitter/status/738237664948834304/photo/1 Dutch A74 highway closed due to flood/mudflow.

Other

Sudden onset of storm in Germany as viewed from racetrack

Heavy rain in Germany leads to 4 deaths (Dutch) Over 40 people were rescued from life threatening situations. One of the four victims was a male firefighter. The weekend before 35 people were struck by lightning.

Thousands of evacuations due to floods in France (Dutch) Over 5,500 people were evacuated, firefighters responded to 10,500 calls for help, and one 86 year old woman reportedly drowned.

Europe flooding: Five dead as waters rise in Germany and France

El Nino made a nuisance of itself in 2015
Parts of Philippines may submerge due to global warming
New data set establishes global flood risks more accurately (Dutch)

Vulnerable people

Revamped labor guidelines to issue sterner warning against LGBT discrimination (Japan)

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. 

News in Japan - May

Japan:

80% of SDF big choppers couldn’t fly for Kumamoto mainly because they were undergoing emergency checks

Gov't to call for beefing up support for foreign visitors in disaster (Japan) Tourism organizations should get the picture of the locations of evacuation centers as well as hospitals that can accept foreigners, according to the planned request. The guidelines state examples of foreign language terms regarding evacuation and advice, and urge making use of volunteer interpreters and preparation of emergency meals that can be provided to Muslims.

News in Japan - March

GEJET:

Japan still coming to terms with 3.11

Five years on, Japan’s crisis response infrastructure still lacking

5 years after the earthquake still 2,561 people are missing and 15,894 people died (Japanese)

Fukushima 5 years later: 2011 disaster by the numbers

Court finds Miyagi City responsible for tsunami death of student

Japan marks 5 years since the 3/11 disaster The Reconstruction Agency says at least 3,407 people died in 10 prefectures due to health problems and other reasons related to their lives as evacuees. The agency adds that as of February 12th, more than 174,000 people were living in temporary, rental or other housing as evacuees.

The Fukushima cleanup will take generations The cleanup team is still struggling to halt the buildup of contaminated water, and the techniques and equipment needed to locate, extract, and dispose of the melted fuel have yet to be developed. Given these challenges, many experts are convinced that the decommissioning process will take far longer than the official 40-year timetable-perhaps as long as a century. Rainwater and groundwater have continued to pour into the damaged basements of Units 1-4, where it mixes with the highly radioactive cooling water already inside the buildings. The pillars of TEPCO's water management efforts to date are two systems for channeling groundwater away from the contaminated basements and releasing it into the ocean relatively free of radioactive contaminants. One, the groundwater bypass system, collects water in wells dug between the reactor buildings and the hills to the west. The water is pumped up from the wells, tested, and eventually released into the ocean. The other, called the subdrain system, uses wells dug around the perimeter of the reactor buildings. So far, TEPCO has discharged some 230,000 tons of water into the ocean using these two methods combined. Even so, groundwater continues to pour into the buildings' basements at the rate of about 150 tons a day.

Lessons from Fukushima An RJIF study of hospital responses to the disaster found medical care for the afflicted was only able to continue at significantly reduced capacity because kizuna — social solidarity built upon people-to-people bonds, social networks and personal contacts — swung into action to mobilise armies of volunteers in forming the core engine of recovery. It was the residents of Fukushima who heroically banded together to manage the crisis. ‘[I]t is an unfortunate reality that in 2011 Japan had to resort to kizuna, even during the initial phase of crisis management, due to inadequate centralised management…Japan must now look beyond kizuna and build a crisis response apparatus that doesn’t overly rely on the goodwill of the Japanese people’. The people of Japan deserve better than having to rely on kizuna next time round. ‘To date, the NRA has received safety review applications for a total of 25 of the 43 existing commercial reactors’, Koppenborg reports. Commercial interests now have to face up to the NRA’s new regulatory teeth. It appears unlikely that further applications will be made and not all of these 25 applications can count on being successful. But ‘if Japan is to meet its goal of generating 20–22 per cent of its power through nuclear energy by 2030 it needs to reopen 30 reactors’, says Koppenborg. Richard Samuels argues that ‘perhaps the most striking development in the weeks and months after the devastation was how champions of existing institutions, practices, preferences and ideas — even those that failed so spectacularly and so indisputably — rallied to define the lessons that would be drawn. Political entrepreneurs from every corner framed the catastrophe to justify, legitimate, fortify and sell their pre-existing preferences. Japanese politics became a competition for control of who would define the heroes and the villains of the tragedy — and for the power to determine what would come next. Five years on, the 3.11 master narrative is still under construction’. This mindset is a key obstacle in the political gridlock that blocks improved disaster preparedness and strengthening Japan’s crisis management system as well as a more wholehearted approach to renewable energy sources.

Japan’s 3.11 master narrative still under construction In short, few agreed on policy alternatives, but everyone insisted that 3.11 proved they had been right all along. So where are we five years later? Were civic activists who argued that systemic dysfunctions in Japan can now be fixed correct? Or was one parliamentarian right when he suggested that 3.11, as colossal as it was, may not have been big enough to stimulate substantive institutional change? The evidence is mixed. The popularity of the Abe administration notwithstanding, opinion polls in the years after 3.11 suggest that the public is disillusioned with government. In 2013 large majorities reported that they believed reconstruction funds were wasted. Trust in government increased for a time, but recent data show that it has fallen and is below the global average.

Japan:

Gov't plans to send 140,000 personnel to Tokyo in event of huge quake

LDP to tackle 'taboo' of expanding foreign labor force Japan's ruling party kicks off a debate this month on whether to expand the pool of foreign workers to cope with a graying, shrinking population, challenging a longstanding "taboo" on immigration. But rather than rely on immigration, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to focus on drawing more women and elderly into the workforce to fill the gaps, and has made raising Japan's rock-bottom birthrate a priority. The only way to ensure growth was to increase the size of the workforce, Kimura said in an interview, adding that monetary and fiscal policies were reaching the limit of their capacity to spur growth.

USA:

Single By Choice: Why Fewer American Women Are Married Than Ever Before When I say "the choice to not marry," that doesn't always translate into "I am a woman and I am deciding that I am not going to get married," or "I am rejecting marriage." The choice to not marry can also mean: "I would really like to marry or to fall in love or to meet someone, but I haven't met someone who I feel is going to improve on the life that I am building and making on my own." One of the most startling statistics is that today only 20 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 are married, and that compares to 60 percent in 1960. The other figure that I find very startling, in part because it was so resilient for so long, is the median age of first marriage for women. From the time they started recording it — which was 1890 — until 1980, that median age of first marriage for women fluctuated only between 20 and 22. In 1990 it jumped to over 23, which is a huge jump from having been in that small range for so long. Today, for women, it is over 27. So if you're just looking at the sort of historical picture, there's this relatively flat line for almost 100 years and now there's not just a jump over that line, but way over that line.

Research will help policymakers plan for sea level rise (USA) A new study could help protect more than 13 million American homes that will be threatened by rising sea levels by the end of the century. It is the first major study to assess the risk from rising seas using year 2100 population forecasts for all 319 coastal counties in the continental US. Previous impact assessments use current population figures to assess long-term effects of coastal flooding.

Wetland enhancement in Midwest could help reduce catastrophic floods of the future (USA) New financial models and flood management policies may be needed to actually accomplish this. If just 1.5 percent of the land were used for wetlands, the peak flow of the overall watershed could be reduced by up to 17.5 percent.

Netherlands:

First overtopping threshold of flood relief channel along river Rhine at Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Other:

Future present (Future Earth)

Cyclone Winston: Death toll rises to 29 as clear-up begins

India caste unrest: Ten million without water in Delhi

A map of the most vulnerable places on the planet

Thousands of pieces of data demonstrate that sea levels, extreme phenomena are evolving independently

Salt marshes will persist despite rising seas, study predicts

Flooding alleviated by targeted tree planting and river restoration, scientists discover (UK)

Resetting the river template: the potential for climate-related extreme floods to transform river geomorphology and ecology

Hope in a Changing Climate - by John D. Liu (2009) (Movie)

The Forgotten Climate Solution

Philippines, UNDP to implement landmark program on climate action

When sea levels rise, damage costs rise even faster A team of scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now provides a method to quantify monetary losses from coastal floods under sea-level rise. For the first time, the scientists show that the damage costs consistently increase at a higher rate than the sea-level rise itself.

Citizen science to prevent the effects of floods (Spain) Researchers from UPM are involved in the development of a mobile phone application that allows user to share information about floods and their effects aiming to help researchers.

The best way to protect us from climate change? Save our ecosystems There is now clear evidence that intact forests have a positive influence on both planetary climate and local weather regimes. Forests also provide shelter from extreme weather events, and are home to a host of other valuable ecosystems that are important to human populations as sources of food, medicine and timber. In Vietnam, 12,000 hectares of mangroves have been planted at a cost of US$1.1 million, but saving the US$7.3 million per year that would have been spent on maintaining dykes. In Louisiana, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to an examination of how coastal salt marshes might have reduced some of the wave energy in the hurricane-associated storm surges. Data have now confirmed that salt marshes would have significantly reduced the impact of those surges, and stabilised the shoreline against further insult, at far less cost than engineered coastal defences. With this data in hand, discussions are now beginning around how to restore the Louisiana salt marshes to insulate against future extreme weather events.

Climate change is a potent element in the deadly brew of disaster risk Are we getting better at managing disasters, or are we actually reducing disaster risk? There is a significant difference between the two, and addressing that difference should have a profound impact on development.  at least 90% of disasters linked to natural hazards are climate related. Mortality is declining in many places because of better disaster management andmore effective use of early warning systems. But more needs to be done to reduce risk comprehensively, including by tackling the compounding factors of poverty and inequality, rapid and unplanned urbanisation, damage to eco-systems, and poor risk governance. More national disaster loss databases to guide investments should be established.

Paris prepares for possible deluge similar to 1910 Great Flood More than 100 years ago, the Seine River rose 8m above its usual level following months of high rainfall, causing the catastrophe known as the Great Flood of Paris. There were no deaths but it took around 35 days for the water to clear.

Each year there is a one in 100 chance that a flood of that scale will occur in Paris again. The exercise will be carried out as if the river levels are rising by 50cm each day, allowing 900 emergency personnel, 150 police officers and 40 emergency vehicles to practice the necessary steps they will have to take. The exercise will also test how almost 90 public and private institutions such as hospitals, energy firms and waste disposal companies cope with the situation. “The difference between 1910 [and now] is that at that time we didn’t have telephone lines, the subway or electrics running underground. Now... if you have water [underground], everything will [go] down". The flood could cover an area measuring 500sq/km and affect the 830,000 people who live in the zone. More than 430,000 homes would be exposed to water as well as 100,000 businesses. Rectifying the damage could cost the city up to £15.5 billion.

Speeding up accuracy of flood risk assessment (Australia) The new method tested by the research team is aimed at providing a highly accurate assessment at a much faster rate. The method (known as hybrid causative events, or HCE) relies on an algorithm that knocks out all of the unnecessary information used by the slower, continuous simulation approach -- such as long, dry periods without rainfall.  It might take another five years or so for this method to be available to industry.

Adaptation to increasing flood risk in Europe should aim to reduce impact Scientists investigated the benefits of four adaptation measures to reduce the increasing flood risk in Europe under state-of-the-art global warming projections under a high-end climate scenario. Adaptation measures include the rise of flood protections, reduction of the peak flows through water retention, reduction of vulnerability and relocation to safer areas. According to the study, adaptation efforts should favour measures targeted at reducing the impacts of floods, such as relocation and vulnerability reduction, rather than trying to avoid them. Reducing vulnerability includes early warning systems, dry and wet flood proofing, and floating buildings, among others. Conversely, adaptation plans only based on rising flood protections have the effect of reducing the frequency of small floods and exposing the society to less-frequent but catastrophic floods and potentially long recovery processes. 

Can improved agricultural practices help combat climate change? Did you know that over half of global non-carbon dioxide (non-CO2) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are accountable to agriculture?  

'Unprecedented' storms and floods are more common than we think (UK) They conclude that 21st-century flood events such as Storm Desmond are not exceptional or unprecedented in terms of their frequency or magnitude, and that flood frequency and flood risk forecasts would be improved by including data from flood deposits dating back hundreds of years. "Conventional methods of analysing river flow gauge records cannot answer these questions because upland catchments usually have no or very short records of water levels of around 30 or 40 years. In fact, recent careful scientific analysis of palaeoflood deposits (flood deposits dating back hundreds of years) in the UK uplands shows that 21st-century floods are not unprecedented in terms of both their frequency (they were more frequent before 1960) and magnitude (the biggest events occurred during the 17th–19th centuries)." Professor John Lewin from the University of Aberystwyth said: "What is needed, is far more resilience for already-developed floodplains, and much more serious insistence that future floodplain development should be virtually curtailed. Somewhere along the line floodplain development has been allowed by local authorities and the UK government to continue regardless."

Vulnerable people:

Survey reveals money, health fears of single Japanese women in nonstaff jobs

UN publishes stamps on gay rights (Dutch)

Factbox: The world's most expensive places to buy water

One-third of working women in Japan sexually harassed: study  The study, released Tuesday and the first of its kind, examined responses from more than 9,600 women employees, submitted by mail or online. The response rate was 18%. Of the respondents, 29% said they had suffered sexual harassment. The most common type of harassment was having their appearance or age become the focus of conversation, at 54%. The next most common was unwanted touching at 40%, followed by sexually related questions at 38%. Twenty-seven percent were asked out for meals and dates. 

Few women in higher management Netherlands (Dutch) Results from the report http://www.grantthornton.global/globalassets/wib_turning_promise_into_practice.pdf show that only 18% of positions in higher management are held by women in the Netherlands. Japan scores lowest of researched countries with 7%, and Russia highest with 45%.

Japan rejects U.N. panel view on 'comfort women' Japan rejected on Tuesday a U.N. panel's view that Tokyo should take into consideration the opinions of so-called comfort women in implementing a bilateral agreement reached with South Korea last year. "The (panel's) conclusion does not sufficiently reflect the Japanese government's explanation and is regrettable," Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women said Monday the agreement did not fully adopt a victim-centered approach to address the issue of women who were procured for Japan's wartime military brothels.

1 in 29 babies born in Japan in 2014 had non-Japanese parent The number of babies whose parents are both non-Japanese totaled about 15,000, compared with 20,000 who were born to Japanese and non-Japanese couples, according to the ministry data.

How People Learn to Become Resilient If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are. It’s only when you’re faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount? Not all of the at-risk children reacted to stress in the same way. Two-thirds of them “developed serious learning or behavior problems by the age of ten, or had delinquency records, mental health problems, or teen-age pregnancies by the age of eighteen.” But the remaining third developed into “competent, confident, and caring young adults.” They had attained academic, domestic, and social success—and they were always ready to capitalize on new opportunities that arose. A resilient child might have a strong bond with a supportive caregiver, parent, teacher, or other mentor-like figure. But another, quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do with how the children responded to the environment. The resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group. One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? “Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic.” Werner found that resilient individuals were far more likely to report having sources of spiritual and religious support than those who weren’t. You can train people to better regulate their emotions, and the training seems to have lasting effects. Unfortunately, the opposite may also be true. “We can become less resilient, or less likely to be resilient,” Bonanno says. “We can create or exaggerate stressors very easily in our own minds. That’s the danger of the human condition.” 

First gender identity disorder doctors certified in Japan  The society eventually hopes to make the cost of hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery, which is currently fully shouldered by the patients, covered by national health insurance.

News in Japan - February

USA:

History Doesn’t Repeat Itself—Not Here, Anyway (USA). After discussions and deliberation between cities, states, and the federal government, many of these flood-damaged and flood-prone lands were converted into open space through government acquisitions, or “buyouts.” After 1993, parks and fields were created where homes had once stood. These areas were now easier to maintain and protect. Children could play football or soccer. Families could picnic in the summertime and build snowmen in the winter.

Record Missouri flooding was manmade calamity, scientist says Most news reports blamed it on the heavy rain, but a professor of earth and planetary sciences says analysis of the flood data shows much of the damage was due to recent modifications to the river. The flood on the middle Mississippi River, in turn, was remarkable for its short duration and the time of year. "It was essentially a winter flash flood on a continental-scale river," Criss said. "The Mississippi has been so channelized and leveed close to St. Louis that it now responds like a much smaller river." "In the meantime," he said, "inaccurate Federal Emergency Management Agency flood frequencies based on the assumption that today's river will behave as it has in the past greatly underestimate our real flood risk and lead to inappropriate development in floodways and floodplains." "The heavy rainfall was probably related to El Niño, and possibly intensified by global warming. But new records were set only in areas that have undergone intense development, which is known to magnify floods and shorten their timescales. "People want to blame the rain, but this is mostly us," Criss said. "It's a manmade disaster." During the New Year's flood, roughly 7,000 buildings near St. Louis were damaged, two interstate highways were closed for several days, the community of Valley Park was evacuated, and two Metropolitan Sewer District plants were swamped so that sewage was dumped directly into the water. The flood killed more than 20 people in Missouri and Illinois, caused several hundred million dollars of damage, and left millions of tons of debris in its wake.

The best way to protect us from climate change? Save our ecosystems There is now clear evidence that intact forests have a positive influence on both planetary climate and local weather regimes. Forests also provide shelter from extreme weather events, and are home to a host of other valuable ecosystems that are important to human populations as sources of food, medicine and timber. In Vietnam, 12,000 hectares of mangroves have been planted at a cost of US$1.1 million, but saving the US$7.3 million per year that would have been spent on maintaining dykes. In Louisiana, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 led to an examination of how coastal salt marshes might have reduced some of the wave energy in the hurricane-associated storm surges. Data have now confirmed that salt marshes would have significantly reduced the impact of those surges, and stabilised the shoreline against further insult, at far less cost than engineered coastal defences. With this data in hand, discussions are now beginning around how to restore the Louisiana salt marshes to insulate against future extreme weather events.

Flavour of Dutch dialogues gets into 1 billion dollar US disaster resilience plans Morris has been closely involved in the competition and emphasises the tremendous Dutch influence in these projects. In particular, he mentions the climate adaptive approach that focusses on disaster prevention, and on the involvement of many stakeholders right from the start. "This is a distinct Dutch approach to urban planning", says Morris. "Also the involvement of landscape architecture shows the Dutch influence in these projects". "With the two competitions the housing department provokes the states and the local communities to think about their future and the social-economic development. The US is well organized on reactive disaster response. The competitions made them think of the future and long term planning for smart investments." 

Netherlands:

First high water to pass over to the new side channel in Lent (Dutch)

Vulnerable People:

Survey reveals money, health fears of single Japanese women in nonstaff jobs

Other:

India caste unrest: Ten million without water in Delhi

UNISDR Science and Technology Roadmap

Terms of Reference of the Scientific and Technical Partnership for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030

Reconnecting a River A case study of conservation efforts in Mexico's Colorado River Delta

NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal Record-Shattering Global Warm Temperatures in 2015

Floods are natural, they don't have to lead to disasters

Four billion people face severe water scarcity, new research finds

Nature Crucial to Combatting Impact of Climate Change on Water

Cyclone Winston: Death toll rises to 29 as clear-up begins

A map of the most vulnerable places on the planet

Thousands of pieces of data demonstrate that sea levels, extreme phenomena are evolving independently

Salt marshes will persist despite rising seas, study predicts

UN agricultural agency helps Pakistan cope with natural disasters such as floods, quakes, droughts

With a 21 percent share of the national gross domestic product (GDP) and a 45 percent share of Pakistan's total workforce, it is crucial that agriculture be able to prevent and mitigate the impact of disasters.

Human-made climate change helped cause south of England floods, say scientists anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of the once-a-century wet January in 2014 by 43% (uncertainty range: 0-160%). The heightened risk of rainfall found in the meteorological modelling led to an increase in the peak 30-day river flow of 21% (uncertainty range: -17-133%) and about 1,000 more properties at risk of flooding (uncertainty range: -4,000-8,000).

Borrowed Time on Disappearing Land (Bangladesh) “These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States.” Making matters worse, much of what the Bangladeshi government is doing to stave off the coming deluge — raising levees, dredging canals, pumping water — deepens the threat of inundation in the long term. In an analysis of decades of tidal records published in October, Dr. Pethick found that high tides in Bangladesh were rising 10 times faster than the global average. He predicted that seas in Bangladesh could rise as much as 13 feet by 2100, four times the global average. “The reaction among Bangladeshi government officials has been to tell me that I must be wrong,” he said. “That’s completely understandable, but it also means they have no hope of preparing themselves.” “There is no doubt that preparations within Bangladesh have been utterly inadequate, but any such preparations are bound to fail because the problem is far too big for any single government,” said Tariq A. Karim, Bangladesh’s ambassador to India. “We need a regional and, better yet, a global solution. The family reunited on the road the next day after the children spent a harrowing night avoiding snakes that had sought higher ground, too. They drank rainwater until rescuers arrived a day or two later with bottled water, food and other supplies. In the weeks after the storm, the women of Dakope found firewood by wading into the raging river and pushing their toes into the muddy bottom. They walked hours to buy drinking water. “I don’t want to stay here (slums) for too long,” Mr. Gazi said. “If we can save some money, then we’ll go back. I’ll work on a piece of land and try to make it fertile again.” But the chances of finding fertile land in his home village, where the salty rivers have eaten away acre upon acre, are almost zero.

News in Japan - January

USA:
Geologic formation could hold clues to melting glacier floodwaters

Mississippi River inundates southern Illinois; Memphis is next: The deadly onslaught of rising waters and storms has killed more than two dozen people in Missouri and Illinois. "I'm from this part of the state and, quite frankly, it's almost hard to believe," the Missouri governor said. "It's almost as if you're living on some other planet."
Blizzard is over on East Coast, but Monday travel could be daunting (USA)

Redirected flood waters lead to unintended consequences (USA)

Researchers to participate in flood reconnaissance mission USA

When the Big One comes: the woman preparing LA for life after a major quake
LA isn’t just idly waiting for the catastrophe. For the past year, Mayor Eric Garcetti has been working with the US Geological Survey’s southern California earthquake expert Dr Lucy Jones to develop an quake resiliency strategy for the city. In October, the city enacted the showpiece of that effort, a set of aggressive seismic regulations that will require retrofits on more than 15,000 buildings across the city.
The city of Los Angeles is complex, with strong neighbourhood identities, a fabled history, growing cultural assets, people from more than 150 countries speaking 220 languages, and industries – old and new – that are reinventing, innovating and constantly changing.
The city of Los Angeles has 87 other cities in the county and Southern California is much larger. So in order for the city to be resilient, working with our neighbours and the rest of Southern California to improve our resilience is really important.
In December 2014, the mayor’s office released Resilience By Design, an 18-point plan to help the city prepare for, respond to and recover from earthquakes. Its recommendations led to the city’s seismic retrofit ordinance, and also seek to address water security and telecommunications stability in the event of a large earthquake. Aho is working to improve the stability of cell phone towers so that they’ll be able to operate and connect people with critical emergency services during an earthquake or other major disaster.
The main tunnels that bring water from the California Aqueduct down to the Los Angeles basin lay almost directly on top of the San Andreas Fault, a major continental fault between the Pacific and North American plates. A moderate to major earthquake could destroy the tunnels and cut off the city from its water supply.
The key is getting ready, Aho says. “Typically you have a major disaster, a Northridge, a Katrina, a Sandy, and then you start making changes,” she says. “We’re making changes before.”

Netherlands:

Less muskrats caught in 2015 (Dutch) The number dropped with 6% to 88,650 muskrats, who often cause damage to levees by digging tunnels. The number of caught coypu (river rat) increased by 16% to 1,212. Their numbers have increased the past few years due to mild winters and thereby migration from Germany. The water boards are working together with local governments and nature organizations on how to manage the return of beavers, an endangered species that also damages levees and is causing safety concerns.

Other:

Deltares presents composition of flood maps using satellite data through Google Earth Engine Project coordinator Jaap Schellekens, Deltares: “The research shows that it will now be possible, with only one single application, to look at any location in the world, zoom in until 30 metres and see where it was flooded in the last fifteen years”.

Australia: NSW floods force people and animals to flee

Appliance of science key to disaster risk reduction UNISDR conference

Earthquake hits India's Manipur state: Seven dead and 52 injured in Manipur (India). At least three people were killed and about 40 others injured today in Bangladesh in quake—related incidents as people rushed out in panic. The tremor was felt throughout Bangladesh around 4:35 AM local time. In Dhaka, most people rushed out to the streets in panic.

Vulnerable People: 

Equal Wedding Japan: Traditional marriage services for same-sex couples in Japan

Floods in UK:

This flood was not only foretold – it was publicly subsidised
Upstream flood banks now protect crops, not the city of York. Internal drainage boards – which are public bodies but tend to be mostly controlled by landowners – often prioritise the protection of farmland above the safety of towns and cities downstream.
Farm subsidies everywhere are conditional on the land being in “agricultural condition”. This does not mean any actual farming has to take place there – only that it looks like farmland. Any land covered by “permanent ineligible features” is disqualified. What does this mean? Wildlife habitat. If farmers don’t keep the hills bare, they don’t get their money. Scrub, regenerating woodland, forested gullies, ponds and other features that harbour wildlife and hold back water must be cleared. European rules insist that we pay farmers to help flood our homes.
We need flood prevention as well as flood defence. This means woodland and functioning bogs on the hills. It means pulling down embankments to reconnect rivers to their floodplains, flooding fields instead of towns. It means allowing rivers to meander and braid. It means creating buffer zones around their banks: places where trees, shrubs, reeds and long grass are allowed to grow, providing what engineers call hydraulic roughness. It means the opposite of the orgy of self-destruction that decades of government and European policy have encouraged: grazing, mowing, burning, draining, canalisation and dredging.
Natural flood management of this kind does not guarantee that urban floods will never happen. But its absence exacerbates them. Yes, Britain has been hit by massive storms and record rainfall. But it has also been hit by incompetence, ignorance and concessions to favoured interests. This, at least, we can change. 

How the floods united the north – from chefs bearing curry to refugees with sandbags
The Sikhs had been dishing out free curry in Mytholmroyd for a few days when a man in his mid to late 20s came up to them, looking emotional. He had a confession to make. “I used to hate Asians,” he told one of the coordinators from Khalsa Aid, a Sikh charity based in Slough, who came up to volunteer in the West Yorkshire town after it was almost wiped out in the post-Christmas floods. “I used to be with Combat 18. But I’m so ashamed of that now, having seen how you are all up here helping us.” He vowed to go and apologise to all the Asian shopkeepers he had been rude to over the years.
On Sunday night, he logged on to Facebook for the first time in his life. “Hi, my name’s Mark and I lost everything I own in the Boxing Day floods,” he wrote. Within an hour, he’d had 80 offers of help from people he had never met in his life, prompting his second-ever Facebook post. “Incredibly overwhelmed by the response, not too proud to say tears have been shed over the well wishes and offers of support, again from strangers. I have to admit, I was a single, cynical man, living in his hometown of Sowerby Bridge, a town I barely recognise from my youth and I felt a huge disconnect. I felt no sense of society or belonging [to] the town where I was born. And it took a tragedy, at a time when most people focus [on] their own families. And yet, without request or reward, people have put their backs and hearts into helping strangers. It took a tragedy to bring a dawning of a new year with more hope for myself than I have felt in a long time, all thanks to a community I didn’t believe existed. I’m ashamed to say I thought Britain was broken. I’m now proud to say the scales have fallen from my eyes and now I see.”
While the floods helped restore Slade’s faith in people, they did show up the cruelty of a minority of others. (…) A week on, he cannot believe that anyone would be so callous. “The thieves took advantage of the fact that the power was off, so the CCTV wasn’t working and nor was the alarm. It makes you think these people know what they are doing. The only comfort we can gain from this is that people care. A hundred thousand people saw our Facebook post about the theft. All over the country people are trying to help us.”
Yasser al-Jassem, a refugee who escaped Syria a few months ago, explains why they were there: “I volunteered when I was in Aleppo. I was an ambulance driver and helped with humanitarian rescue efforts when the Assad regime bombed civilian areas. Now, in the UK, I also want to volunteer, and so do many other Syrians who recognise the importance of humanitarian efforts like this one because of the destruction in our homeland.”

News in Japan - November

Japan:

Study says Tokyo, Osaka, other mega-cities will be swamped by surging sea levels, even at 2 degrees Celsius rise A spike in Earth’s temperature of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would submerge land currently occupied by 280 million people, while an increase of 4 degrees Celsius - humanity’s current trajectory - would cover areas populated by more than 600 million people, the study said.

In the capital, 7.5 million people - 30 percent of Tokyo’s population - would be affected by the sea level rise under the 4 C scenario. A rise by 2 C would leave 4.2 million people’s homes underwater.

In Osaka, 6.2 million people - a staggering 38 percent of its population - would be affected under the 4 C rise. Under the 2 C scenario, the city would still see 4.2 million affected.

Sea level rises corresponding to these 2 C or 4 C scenarios could unfold in two hundred years, but would more likely happen over many centuries, perhaps as long as 2,000 years, according to the research, published by Climate Central.

USA:
Study ranks six American cities on preparation for climate change
Houston-Galveston region could be better protected from impact of hurricanes and severe storms

Netherlands:
Room for the river programme completes its largest depolderingproject Noordwaard, the Netherlands
Current technologies for levee monitoring in the Netherlands

Other:
Images Show Impact of Sea Level Rise on Global Icons
Paying it forward in a digital age: A global community committed to a mapped world
Salmon crossing the road during flood

News in Japan - October

GEJET:
TEPCO rejected requests for anti-tsunami steps before nuclear crisis
First cancer case confirmed from Fukushima cleanup

Japan:
Behind the Scenes / Concern for privacy of Joso missing excessive
Volunteers mucking in to help Japan clean-up

Strong storm injures people, disrupts transportation in Japan

USA:
Hurricane Patricia Recap: Strongest Landfalling Pacific Hurricane on Record
Flood risk on rise for New York City, New Jersey coast, study finds
One-two punch of rising seas, bigger storms may greatly magnify US East coast floods

Netherlands:
Pop-up Exhibition in Dordrecht on potential flood disasters

Other:
In dryland African regions, limiting wildlife water access can reduce water quality
NASA studying 2015 El Nino event as never before
Want To Know How Sea Level Rise Will Impact Your Hometown? There’s A Map For That
Surging seas mapping progress
Researchers work on model to help restoration managers with decision-making (USA, Germany)
Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean
Work starts on Sendai indicators

Vulnerable People:
Japan’s child poverty above OECD average
Shibuya Ward to begin accepting applications for 'same-sex partnership certificates'

Japanese flood and landslides:

Japan Floods, Landslides: 8 Dead, 46 Injured; Missing Persons All Accounted For

Here are the latest statistics from the Japanese government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency and other national and local governments as of Friday, Sept. 18:

•        The death toll is eight: three in Tochigi Prefecture, three in Ibaraki Prefecture, and two in Miyagi Prefecture.

•        There are 46 confirmed injuries, with Ibaraki Prefecture accounting for 24 of them.

•        A total of 18,882 dwellings have been confirmed flooded. Ibaraki leads this list as well, with 12,088 flooded homes.

•        In addition to the flooded homes, 16 dwellings have been destroyed and another 102 have structural damage.

•        Damage also occurred to 61 non-residential structures.

•        Damage to the agricultural, forestry and fishing industries has reached 11.7 billion yen (about 98 million U.S. dollars).

•        At least 455 landslides were reported – 358 of them in Tochigi Prefecture alone, and 312 of those in the city of Nikkō, according to the prefectural government.

•        Up to 26 inches of rain fell in eastern Japan Sunday through Friday due to Tropical Storm Etau and its remnant low.

•        Local officials in Ibaraki Prefecture said 1,344 people had been rescued via helicopter by the country's Self-Defence Force and rescuers from 10 of the country's 47 prefectures.

Key developments in the storm:

•        On Wednesday, Sept. 16, officials confimed the death of a 40-year-old man who had been out on his bicycle when the floods hit Ibaraki Prefecture on Sept. 10.

•        A 60-year-old man was found dead Saturday after the vehicle he was in was swept into a flooded river Friday morning in the city of Kurihara, Miyagi Prefecture. A 48-year-old woman also died in that incident.

•        Japanese media said a pair of eight-year-old boys were among those found alive and removed from the list of missing Saturday.

•        Two men, ages 71 and 51, were found dead in rice fields flooded by the levee breach in Joso, according to public broadcaster NHK. The men were not previously among the list of missing.

•        The Japanese government's Fire and Disaster Management Agency confirmed that a man found dead in a flooded vehicle in Tochigi Prefecture Sunday morning died of storm-related causes.

•        A 63-year-old woman was confirmed dead after a landslide struck Kanuma city, Tochigi Prefecture, early Thursday. The woman was missing for hours before being found dead Thursday evening.

•        A man in his 20s was confirmed dead Friday after falling into a flooded drainage pipe Thursday in Nikkō city, Tochigi Prefecture.

•        Rare emergency weather warnings were issued for Tochigi, Ibaraki and Miyagi prefectures on Thursday and Friday, but have all since been lowered.

•        A magnitude-5.2 earthquake struck Tokyo Bay at 5:49 a.m. local time Saturday, rattling the entire Tokyo region and prompting fears of quake-triggered landslides in rain-soaked hilly terrain.

•        The earthquake injured seven people in Tokyo and its suburbs, according to the FDMA.

•        Another earthquake, rated magnitude 4.6 and centered off the east coast of Ibaraki Prefecture, rattled the Joso flood zone nearly six hours later but with weaker ground shaking.

•        The Shibui River broke through a levee in Ōsaki city, Miyagi Prefecture, on Friday morning. At least 1,000 people were stranded in floodwaters, according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

•        The Japan Meteorological Agency issued the maximum "Level 5" flood warning Friday for the Yoshida River in Miyagi Prefecture and for the Mogamiogumi River in Yamagata Prefecture.

•        More than 800 people in the mountainous town of Minamiaizu, Fukushima Prefecture, were cut off from the outside world due to flooding and landslides on the lone highway through town Friday.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a rare emergency heavy rainfall warning for Miyagi Prefecture and its 2.3 million residents early Friday as torrential rains continued to drench the prefecture, which includes the city of Sendai, raising concerns of landslides and river flooding. The JMA observation site near Sendai's central business district reported 269 millimeters (10.59 inches) of rain in the 24-hour period between 7:40 a.m. Thursday and 7:40 a.m. Friday local time. (Japan is 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Daylight Time.) JMA lowered the warning for Miyagi Friday evening.

"We can say this is an abnormal situation and there is imminent serious danger," said Takuya Deshimaru, chief forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, according to the BBC.

On Thursday, JMA issued similar emergency weather warnings for 5 million people in Tochigi Prefecture and Ibaraki Prefecture, north and northeast of Tokyo, on Thursday morning. The warnings were issued as a band of heavy rainfall associated with the post-tropical remnant of Tropical Storm Etau stalled over eastern Japan, dumping up to 21 inches of rain in 24 hours near the head of the Kunigawa River, which drains south through the northern suburbs of Tokyo.

The emergency warnings in Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures were lowered Friday morning.