News in Japan - April

GEJET:
Tsunami debris disposal completed on schedule in Miyagi, Iwate
Fukushima children start school in Nagano as part of special project

79 U.S. sailors sue TEPCO over radiation during Operation Tomodachi

Tsunami survival by the numbers

USA:
NASA radar watches over California's aging levees
Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge: A Comprehensive Strategy for Hoboken

Netherlands:
Increasing height of river levees necessary to prevent disaster (Dutch)

Other:
Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN

Water logging in the Coastal Plain of Zhejiang Province China

M8.2 - 95km NW of Iquique, Chile

M7.6 - 19km S of Iquique, Chile

French scientists are working on an acoustic earthquake shield

Vulnerable people:

Two detainees die at immigration center

Only 1 in 7 Japanese scientists are women: study

Characteristics of vulnerable people

There are four characteristics of vulnerable people listed below. In combination with the hazard type of flood, several examples are listed:

1) Fewer material and/or financial resources

• People cannot afford safe housing
• People cannot afford survival package

2) Less physically or mentally capable

• People cannot see or hear the warnings
• People are unable to move themselves 
• People have trouble moving quickly

3) Less knowledge or experience

• People don't understand risks
• People don't know the evacuation routes

4) Restricted by commitments

• People who have to take care of their family
• People who are police officers, nurses, or teachers
• People who own animals

People can have multiple characteristics simultaneously, or their characteristics might change over the course of their life. This makes it difficult to estimate the number of vulnerable people, as there will be overlap. 

ICHARM Open Day

Today was ICHARM’s Open Day where we got a visit from high school students.

This year’s program started with a welcome address by Prof. Kuniyoshi Takeuchi, the Director of ICHARM. After this Dr. Kelly Kibler presented on ‘Water-related disaster in the United States of America:  The Colorado Floods of 2013’ and PhD student Robin Kumar Biswas presented on ‘Bangladesh and Water Related Disasters in Bangladesh’.

The next section called ‘Let’s learn and talk with foreign researchers’ featured posters and presenters from the countries the Netherlands, Guatemala, China, El Salvasor, Kenya, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Venezuela. As last year, during this section I presented a poster on the ‘History and Future of Water Related Disasters in the Netherlands’.

Prof. Shinji Egashira closed the day, after which a commemorative photo was taken. 

Definitions of vulnerable people

To address the first point, defining vulnerable people, I examined many literature and legal sources, to conclude that there is as of yet no definition suited to estimating the number of vulnerable people.

If we want to guarantee equitable disaster risk, we must first know:
•Who are vulnerable people?
•Why are they vulnerable?
•How many vulnerable people exist?
•Which Disaster Risk Management (DRM) measures exist to reduce their vulnerability?

To answer these research questions, it is necessary to:
•Define vulnerable people
•Construct a vulnerability framework based on the root causes of vulnerability
•Estimate the number of vulnerable people
•Evaluate DRM policies

This leads to the following definitions:

Vulnerable people in a community: people who have one or more characteristics that make them more susceptible than others in a community and who therefore require extra DRM measures in order for them to have the same level of risk as others. The picture shows a self-reliant person and a person with a characteristic of vulnerability.

Group of potentially vulnerable people: a group of people who share an aspect that distinguishes the group, such as age or ethnicity, and a majority of whom have one or more characteristics of vulnerable people. The word ‘potential’ in this definition indicates that while there are many individuals in the group who have one or more characteristics of vulnerable people, it is unidentifiable which individuals have the characteristics. The picture shows an example of a group of potentially vulnerable people.

Pictures by Daniel Vrielink (2014).

How to write a paper - resources

Recently, journal publishers are stepping up to provide great advice and resources for aspiring authors. Among the many links, these gems are well worth visiting:

Taylor and Francis
No less than five full books on how to write papers are freely accessible online. To add to this there is audio advice from the editors, and section by section advice and comments on what not to do. This also contains links and email addresses for direct questions on grammar or journal style.

Young Hydrologic Society
In case the five books took too much time to read, this website provides presentation slides of how to write a paper, in minute detail. It also has three suggestions for referencing tools, which may not be free of charge but still a worthwhile organizational investment.

It's one thing to write down what you have done, it's another to write analytically, deciding which word goes where, what sentence needs to explain and what sentence needs to convince, and determining whether your message really comes across or not. As the abstract is among the first things to be read, getting this right will help reviewers decide to read the rest. To analytically write the abstract, look at this Nature guide to authors. Even if biological proteins are not your topic, the flow of the abstract of any scientific paper should ideally be roughly the same as this one. The trick will be to keep up this analytic writing style in the entire paper.

International Development Professional Training Program finished

The end of March coincided with the end of the IDPTP program in Tokyo. It was a blast, meeting so many enthusiastic students from different fields of study and organizations, all eager to learn more on current issues in international development.

And now I'm featured thrice on the website pictures, the center bottom one showing the TEPCO debate where I had to emulate the director of TEPCO. We had a great team and were convincing enough, according to the audience. As you can read in the voices of previous participants, I highly recommend this interactive program for boosting your skills while increasing your knowledge. I can only hope to find such programs in future positions, wherever I may end up. Moreover, I can only hope to meet such great participants again!

ICHARM covered on BBC

The BBC covered ICHARM research and held interviews with several researchers in their article "Can a Zen-like approach help countries with floods?"

Interviewees include Kazuhiko Fukami from the NILIM across the street, and from ICHARM Minoru Kamoto and my main supervisor and director, Kuniyoshi Takeuchi, who is quoted to say: "The disaster impact is increasing so much, this has nothing to do with climate change, it is a change of society".
As my own thesis points out, it is the increase of populations in areas exposed to hazards, in combination with an increase of vulnerable population percentages that lead to the increase of disaster impacts. This is happening regardless of climate change induced increases in intensity and frequency of hazards. Governments have to decide the economic tipping point and value of lives by either favoring safer locations and building codes over continuous investments and uncontrolled urbanization of areas exposed to hazards.