News in Japan - October

USA

Sandy's surge topped by 'rogue' 1950 storm in some areas

Colorado River Delta flows help birds, plants, groundwater

Other

Watersheds Lost Up to 22% of Their Forests in 14 Years. Here’s How it Affects Your Water Supply High erosion deteriorates water quality and reduces reservoir capacity, increasing the cost of water treatment and the risk of contamination. High erosion risk is usually linked to erodible soil, intense rainfall, steep topography and conversion of forest and other natural lands to pasture, cropland and more.

How fast will we need to adapt to climate change? Using sea-level rise as a case study, researchers at Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology have developed a quantitative model that considers different rates of sea-level rise, in addition to economic factors, and shows how consideration of rates of change affect optimal adaptation strategies. If the sea level will rise slowly, it could still make sense to build near the shoreline, but if the sea level is going to rise quickly, then a buffer zone along the shoreline might make more sense. "It is a very different thing to adapt to a sea level that is three feet higher if you think that sea level will rise no farther after that, than to adapt to a sea-level rise that is three feet higher with the expectation that the seas will keep rising," remarked Soheil Shayegh, a former Carnegie postdoc and lead author of the study.

Reservoirs play substantial role in global warming The world's reservoirs are an underappreciated source of greenhouse gases, producing the equivalent of roughly 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide a year, or 1.3 percent of all greenhouse gases produced by humans.

Evaluating forecasting models for predicting rainfall from tropical cyclones more than 50 percent of the deaths associated with hurricanes from 1970 to 2004 were caused by fresh water flooding. And from 1981 to 2011, hurricane damage accounted for almost half -- $417.9 billion -- of the total monetary damage from all weather and climate disasters during that same time period (adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars). Current models can forecast both where and how much rainfall a tropical cyclone will produce up to two days in advance. However, the forecast's accuracy decreased significantly when the prediction window increased to five days.

Hurricane Matthew is just the latest unnatural disaster to strike Haiti At least 1,000 people were killed when Hurricane Matthew battered the Tiburon peninsula in Haiti last week, destroying houses and displacing tens of thousands. Other experts describe disasters as “manifestations of unresolved development problems”. Therefore, disasters are not a natural phenomenon. Humans play a central role. As a result, a natural hazard such as Hurricane Matthew impacts each country in its path differently. We know that development, imposed by external forces that exploit the local labour force is not in the interest of the marginalised. A failure to respect human rights, local needs, the environment and human-environment relations simply creates disaster risk.

Scientists find link between tropical storms and decline of river deltas Lead researcher Professor Stephen Darby of the University of Southampton said: “Our study is the first to show the significant role tropical storms play in delivering sediment to large river deltas.  We show that although human impacts affect the amount of sediment in a river – cyclonic activity is also a very important contributing factor. These results are very significant because the Mekong’s sediment load is already declining as a result of upstream damming and other human impacts such as sand mining. Understanding the role played by changes in tropical cyclone climatology gives us a broader knowledge of the threats facing this delta and others like it around the world.” 

Greenland may be losing ice even faster than we thought

Receding glaciers in Bolivia leave communities at risk  A new study published in The Cryosphere, an European Geosciences Union journal, has found that Bolivian glaciers shrunk by 43% between 1986 and 2014, and will continue to diminish if temperatures in the region continue to increase. "On top of that, glacier recession is leaving lakes that could burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream," says lead-author Simon Cook, a lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.

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. 

News in Japan - April

GEJET:

Court finds Miyagi City responsible for tsunami death of student

Haunting Photographs of Residents Returning to Daily Activities in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone

Court dismisses demand to halt Sendai reactors A Japanese high court has dismissed a request by residents to suspend operations of 2 nuclear reactors at the Sendai nuclear plant in southwestern Japan. The Miyazaki branch of the Fukuoka High Court gave its decision on Wednesday.

USA:

5 Dead in Houston as Flash Floods Leave Thousands Stranded and Without Power All five victims were found inside vehicles submerged in high floodwaters. “Houston residents should avoid travel at all costs today.”

Greenspoint Evacuees Grapple With Uncertainty of What Comes Next (USA)

Quake risk in parts of central U.S. as high as in fault-filled California 

Disaster plans often neglect historic preservation (USA) In Florida, for instance, they found that 23% of the sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places are located in a 100-year floodplain. Most communities have not integrated historic preservation into their disaster management plans. Their survey of state hazard mitigation plans found just 40 percent included a representative from historic preservation on the core planning team while 60 percent did not. "Many disaster mitigation plans make no mention of historic resources," Rumbach said. "As more and more communities bank on historic resources to benefit the local economy, this needs to be remedied." Economics aside, he said, many communities draw a sense of identity from these historic sites and can become unmoored when they are damaged or destroyed.

Increased flooding, accelerated sea-level rise in Miami over last decade, new study shows

Netherlands:

Dutch public works department reinforces coastline at Zandvoort (Dutch) 2.4 million cubic meters of sand are being applied to the coast of Zandvoort and Bloemendaal. This previously happened in 2004 and 2008. The sand is deposited 750 meters from the beach at a depth of five meters. Wind, waves and currents then gradually spread the sand towards the beach. The work takes place over a length of 7.5 kilometers along the coastline, without disrupting beach visitors.

Snow in North of Netherlands and Randstad (Dutch) including fierce hail storms, leading to serious traffic accidents.

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.

Joso flood damage overview

Joso city has made the document: Joso disaster situation by September 2015 Kanto and Tohoku heavy rain.

The total damage costs are still being calculated as the Japanese fiscal year runs until April, but below a translated overview of the gathered damages so far can be found (click to enlarge).

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.

News in Japan - September

GEJET:

Radiation fears as report shows Fukushima fir trees to be growing strangely

Bags containing radioactive waster swept away by floods

Japan:

Tokyo ranked 2nd riskiest city in world due to likely natural and other disasters

As Mount Aso blows its top, tourism industry braces for fallout

USA:

Policy: Hurricane Katrina’s lessons for the world

Ten years after Katrina: New Orleans should adopt a flood safety-first strategy
El Niño may accelerate nuisance flooding (USA)

Netherlands:
Floods in Amsterdam after water pipe burst - Overstromingen in Amsterdam-Zuid na gesprongen waterleiding (Dutch)

Inclement weather causes floods and traffic problems (Dutch)

Other:

Behind Deadly Tianjin Blast, Shortcuts and Lax Rules

3 ways the SDGs could fill the shortcomings of the SFDRR

How to get rid of a satellite after its retirement

M8.3 - 46km W of Illapel, Chile

Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake (0.2-1m)

Vulnerable people:

One in six Japanese children live in poverty, threatening their education, future

Documentary looks at why Japanese parents let young kids walk to school by themselves

News in Japan - August

Japan:
26 natl universities to abolish humanities, social sciences

USA:

Flood damage after Hurricane Katrina could have been prevented, experts say

California levees' vulnerability

Netherlands:
Thunder storms cause water nuisance in the Netherlands (Dutch)

Other:

Virtual sandbox for modeling floods

How many legs does a chicken have?

Flooding's impact on wetlands measurable via low-cost approach
Identifying the factors that contribute to flood fatalities (global)

Estimating the cost of flooding for communities around estuaries (Liverpool)

Vulnerable people:
Over 50% of assemblywomen in Japan have been sexually harassed, survey suggests

News in Japan - July

GEJET:
Gov't to lift evacuation order on Fukushima town on Sept 5  Naraha's 7,400 citizens will be the first evacuees to be able to return home permanently among seven municipalities where the entire population was ordered to leave. However, evacuees have mixed feelings about going back to their hometown due to concerns over radiation and lack of medical care, and it was not clear how many of them would return. "There are no shops. There are no doctors. I don't know what to do," a woman told local media on Tuesday. In April, the government started to allow Naraha evacuees to return home for three-month stays to prepare for permanent return.

Japan:
Mount Fuji climbers urged to protect themselves against volcanic eruption The Yamanashi prefectural government placed 1,500 sets of helmets, goggles and dust-proof masks on the fifth station of the Fuji Subaruline toll road. The Fujiyoshida city government also prepared 1,000 of the sets in mountain lodges.

USA:
Major midwest flood risk underestimated by as much as five feet, study finds  As floodwaters surge along major rivers in the midwestern United States, a new study from Washington University in St. Louis suggests federal agencies are underestimating historic 100-year flood levels on these rivers by as much as five feet, a miscalculation that has serious implications for future flood risks, flood insurance and business development in an expanding floodplain.
Researchers find reasons behind increases in urban flooding (USA)
The Really Big One When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America.FEMAprojects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. We now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three. The odds of the very big one are roughly one in ten.

In Oregon, it has been illegal since 1995 to build hospitals, schools, firehouses, and police stations in the inundation zone, but those which are already in it can stay, and any other new construction is permissible: energy facilities, hotels, retirement homes. In those cases, builders are required only to consult withDOGAMIabout evacuation plans. “So you come in and sit down,” Ian Madin says. “And I say, ‘That’s a stupid idea.’ And you say, ‘Thanks. Now we’ve consulted.’ ”

Twenty-two per cent of Oregon’s coastal population is sixty-five or older. Twenty-nine per cent of the state’s population is disabled, and that figure rises in many coastal counties. “We can’t save them,” Kevin Cupples says. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll go around and check on the elderly.’ No. We won’t.” Nor will anyone save the tourists. Washington State Park properties within the inundation zone see an average of seventeen thousand and twenty-nine guests a day. Madin estimates that up to a hundred and fifty thousand people visit Oregon’s beaches on summer weekends. “Most of them won’t have a clue as to how to evacuate,” he says. “And the beaches are the hardest place to evacuate from.”

Whoever chooses or has no choice but to stay there will spend three to six months without electricity, one to three years without drinking water and sewage systems, and three or more years without hospitals. Those estimates do not apply to the tsunami-inundation zone, which will remain all but uninhabitable for years.

Netherlands:
Dutch F-16 inspects river levees for sand boilsIt was not the first time for a Dutch regional water board to call in an reconnaissance F-16. In 2011 and 2012 F-16s took infra-red images of levees too, but that were all emergency situations when levees were about to fail.

Other:
Research will help inform pre-flood planning (UK)
GNDR SWOT analysis of Sendai Framework for DRR
Climate change reduces coral reefs' ability to protect coasts
Predicting the shape of river deltas

Vulnerable people:
LGBT People Ask for Lawyers' Support for Same-Sex Marriage in Japan A total of 455 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people petitioned the Japan Federation of Bar Associations on Tuesday to urge the government and lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage. The LGBT people, including two living abroad and 142 same-sex couples, argue that it is unconstitutional and an abuse of human rights that same-sex marriages are not legally recognized in Japan.