News in Japan - July

GEJET:

No laughing matter as manga boldly tackle Fukushima

Disaster Big Data

NHK Documentary Disaster Big Data The Key to Recovery, REMIX MissingSky102 Dec 15 2013

The man who is running the length of Japan for tsunami relief

Stigmatized nuclear workers quit TEPCO

Fukushima farmer takes on TEPCO over wife's suicide

Panel wants TEPCO execs charged over nuke crisis

Netherlands:

Thunder causes problems in East and South (Dutch)

RUIMTE VOOR WATERVEILIGHEID (Dutch) meeting Grontmij, starflood program and Marleen van Rijswick

Water nuisance in Brabant (Dutch)

Japan:

Woman drowns in canal as record rainfall hits southwest Japan

The evacuation of 480 000 people, eight municipalities of Okinawa (Japanese)

Japan urges evacuation as typhoon moves in

Japan braces for typhoon Neoguri 55,000 people urged to evacuate U.S. officials at Kadena Air Force Base warned residents to take serious precautions. “I can’t stress enough how dangerous this typhoon may be when it hits Okinawa,” Commander James Hecker of the 18th Wing stationed in Kadena said in a statement posted online. “This is the most powerful typhoon forecast to hit the island in 15 years; we expect damaging winds to arrive by early Tuesday morning. “So be prepared!” Hecker said. “Tie down your outdoor items and work with your neighbors to help them.” He added: “During the typhoon, do not go outside… anything not tied down, even small items, could become deadly projectiles.”

Debris flow in Nagano prefecture (Japanese) – 1 death, train tracks displaced and houses destroyed

3 deaths from typhoon (Japanese): aged 12, 83 and 77 (all male)

Heavy rain in Kanto area end of June (Japanese)

USA:

CNN storm tracker Hurricane Arthur

River basin flood potential inferred using GRACE gravity observations at several months lead time

Satellites reveal possible catastrophic flooding months in advance

Is the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program affordable?

How is coastal risk on the East and Gulf Coasts changing? (US)

Changes in agriculture increase high river flow rates (US)

'Nuisance flooding' an increasing problem as coastal sea levels rise

Other:

'Flood fighter' game teaches Asian kids survival tips

ADB Provides Loans to Help Bangladesh Tackle Menace of River Erosion

Death toll Philippines increasing (Dutch) - 38 deaths

Vulnerable people:

Imagine 10,000 people with dementia going missing and never being found

Society's shut-ins are getting older

U.N. panel calls on Japan to compensate 'comfort women'

Japan must eliminate misogyny in workforce: UNDP chief

U.N. human development report faults inequality

Improvements in life spans, education and incomes are slowing due to natural disasters, misguided government policies and worsening inequality in a world where the 85 richest people have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest people, the United Nations said Thursday in its annual human development report.

“As this report says, it’s not rocket science,” UNDP head Helen Clark said in an interview before the report’s release. “Where people do address these things, development can come along very, very nicely. Where they haven’t addressed a lot of vulnerabilities and development deficits, as in Syria, it all comes spectacularly unstuck.” The UNDP report, published annually since 1990, is intended to inform and influence policy makers. Governments watch the rankings carefully, and “When they don’t do well they put a lot of pressure on us to change the rankings,” Malik said.

Heavy rain in the Netherlands

Here is a video of how the Dutch are handling the recent floods caused by heavy rainfall.

Heatstroke in Japan

After typhoon No. 8 has passed, summer temperatures above 30 degrees have returned. The ministry of the environment warns against heat stroke using a principle called WBGT: Wet Bulb Globe Temperature. This is an empirical index representing the heat stress to which individuals are exposed.

A paper from the end of 2011 described how different ministries are involved in heatstroke warnings:
The Ministry of the Environment has developed and distributes guidelines to prevent heat-related diseases, with specific recommendations for prevention at the local and regional levels [26]. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MOHLW) also promotes preventive action on heat through health education activities and the distribution of health promotion materials. These and other national entities maintain websites on the prevention of heat disorders. Forecasts of Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT—a widely used heat stress index) and levels of heat disorder risk are provided by the National Institute of Environmental Studies (NIES) throughout the summer via the Internet.

The ministry of the environment has published a possible heat stroke calendar, by using combined temperatures from the cities Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Sendai and Kagoshima, with cumulative figures of the past five years in the left most column:

The number of days with high temperatures has been increasing the past years. This calendar also shows why October and May are the months which are considered to have the best seasons.

International River Basins

The UN Watercourses Convention User's Guide (2012) contains maps of all the international river basins in the world. These show where transboundary agreements exist and where they are yet to be made. Most of the information comes from Oregon State (2009).
What we really need is a global organization focused on data management, monitoring the status of international agreements on for instance river basins, but also flood occurrences and other disasters would be a welcome addition. We have several UN organizations that might be suited for this task; and choosing one sole entity may be tricky.
Another interesting point of the user guide is that three countries voted against the convention in 1997: Burundi, China and Turkey. While Turkey had clear reservations against the ambiguous descriptions of equitable and reasonable use, what constitutes no harm, and how to settle international disputes while guaranteeing sovereignty; it was not clear why the other two countries voted against the convention.

News in Japan - June

GEJET

Independence of Japan's nuclear regulator questioned after shakeup

Netherlands
Recreational route around Deltaworks opened
Still no compensation inhabitants Groningen (Dutch)

Other
Hurricanes with female names lead to more deaths (Dutch) 
Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes
At least 12 killed in latest rainstorms to batter south China
http://www.flooddefenceexpo.co.uk/
Dutch researchers predict more High Asia's runoff due to increasing glacier melt and precipitation
Humans have been changing Chinese environment for 3,000 years: Ancient levee system set stage for massive, dynasty-toppling floods

Vulnerable People
Men being outperformed by women in workplace

Japan slowly begins to openly discuss crossdressing men in heterosexual relationships

'Be a blank slate' - The way to get hired in Japan?

Struggling with gender identity (in Japan)

Dutch citizens are living longer in good health In 2030 men are expected to live >75 years on average without physical disabilities, women 74 years.

Ending Japan’s sexism requires men to lean in, too

Sexist views dent Japan push for women's rights

Study limitations

There are three limitations to the methods I used to estimate the number of vulnerable people:

1) People tend to have multiple characteristics simultaneously/ characteristics may change over time

If the numbers of vulnerable people are combined, even though the real number of vulnerable people is not so many, the vulnerability would be increased depending on how many characteristics they have. This means that I have counted some people multiple times, depending on their characteristics. For instance, there are the indicators ‘people with disabilities and no car access’, and ‘older adults over 65 years old and having multiple disabilities’ which have overlap.

This can only be prevented in future research by collecting data on a more regional scale, which is now being introduced in Japan (Action Policies for Supporting Evacuation Activities of Persons Needing Assistance During Forced Evacuations (2013)). The municipalities are mandated to collect data on individual people needing evacuation assistance. My study shows the limitations of the currently available data and the necessity of collecting more data on an individual level.


2) Vulnerability is assumed as binary rather than a continuous variable

If a person has any characteristic, they are equally vulnerable to any other person with any other characteristic. For instance, a person in a wheelchair is equally vulnerable to a person without car access. This may seem unfair. It may be possible to apply weights or gradients, but these are subjective and depend on the culture or even on an individual level;  therefore I chose to work with unbiased numbers.

3) The characteristic ‘restricted by commitments’ – are people vulnerable?

If people are only restricted by commitments, they themselves do not have any characteristic that makes them intrinsically vulnerable. However, these people choose not to evacuate themselves immediately, because of sense of duty, relationship to a dependent, or to protect valuable assets. As they don't evacuate themselves immediately and remain in the exposed area, they become vulnerable to the disaster risk.

Pictures by Daniel Vrielink (2014).

Exposure versus vulnerability

The focus of my thesis lies on measures for vulnerable people in exposed areas. I adopted the UNISDR (2009) definition of vulnerability, which distinguishes vulnerability from exposure. While part (or even all) of a given area (e.g., country, region, river basin, or community) can be exposed to a hazard, the population can be seen as consisting of vulnerable people and self-reliant people. Different parts of an area can be exposed to different types of hazard, and people can be vulnerable to different hazards. While part (or even all) of a given area (e.g., country, region, river basin, or community) can be exposed to a certain hazard, the population can be seen as consisting of vulnerable people and self-reliant people with regards to a certain hazard. 

The figure shows an area with vulnerable and self-reliant people. Whereas all the people in the floodplain may be exposed to floods, the self-reliant people are able to save themselves. They have the necessary physical and mental capacity, information and resources to save themselves, and are not restricted by commitments to e.g. family members, duty, possessions or place. Vulnerable people in the floodplain however have one or more of these characteristics and cannot immediately evacuate themselves out of the area. 

Figure created by Daniël Vrielink (2014).