Global Center of Excellence for Water Hazard and Risk Management
ICHARM The International Centre for Water Hazard
ICHARM > About ICHARM > Commitment to the next biennium
Commitment to the next biennium
In the next biennium, ICHARM will continue working to strengthen and implement the principal activities of "Research," "Training" and "Information Networking." Through the integration of these three pillars, ICHARM will promote the development and dissemination of "Advanced Technology," "Local Practices," and "Capacity Development" through education and training, to a greater extent. In this context, ICHARM will center its activities around the following three focus areas during the next two years.
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Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) KnowledgeHubs
Knowledge Hubs, developed under framework of the Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) with the leadership of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and UNESCO, is a new network of centers of excellence committed to improve water security in the Asia-Pacific region by promotion knowledge sharing and championing feasible solution. On 17 June 2008, ICHARM was officially acknowledged as one of the regional KnowledgeHubs with particular focus on "Disaster Risk Reduction and Flood Management." Aided by ADB, ICHARM has embarked on providing various types of technical assistance, such as local capacity development and satellite-based flood forecasting pilot project, under the slogan of "Localism Practices."
ICHARM's local workshop, "District Level Consultation Workshop on Integrated
Community Based Disaster Management in Banke District, Nepal"
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International Flood Initiative (IFI)
IFI is a framework to promote
collaboration for effective flood management among international organizations
such as UNESCO, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations
University (UNU), and the international Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR),
international Association of Hydrological Science (IAHS) and international Association
of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR), Its official launch was in January
2005 at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in Kobe, Japan. IFI
focuses on research, information networking, education and training, community
empowerment, and technical assistance and guidance. ICHARM serves as the secretariat
of IFI, assuming the key function to promote its activities. The IFI official
website is operated by the secretariat. For more information, visit the IFI website
at:
www.ifi-home.info
IFI Management Committee Meeting
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World Water Forum (WWF) and Asia-Pacific Water Summit (APWS)
The WWF is the world’s largest water-related event held every three years. It is an open, all-inclusive multi-stakeholder process, aiming at raising the importance and understanding of water issues and proposing concrete solutions to address global challenges. As one of its information networking activities, ICHARM acts as one of key players, such as a panel chair to lead disaster-related discussions, in the Fifth WWF in March 2009. ICHARM also serves as the lead organization for the “Water-related Disaster Management” theme inhttp://www.ifi-home.info, for which the first conference was held in December 2007 in Beppu, Japan.
ICHARM Director delivering recommendation at the 1st APWS meeting
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Capacity Development-Training Courses, Follow-up Activities
To cope with major water-related disasters, such as floods, it is important and essential to strengthen not only individual but also organizational capacity in disaster management because there is always limitation for what each indivisual person can do. Well aware of that fact, ICHARM conducts training courses designed to contribute to organizational capacity development.
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Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS)
For more effective and efficient flood forecasting in developing countries, ICHARM has development a concise flood-runoff analysis system as a streamflow version of GFAS, which is provided by the international Flood Network (IFNet). The system named the "Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS) " is equipped with a number of innovative function to assist developing countries, especially ungauged or poorly gauged basins, in flood-runoff analysis. IFAS can use not only ground-but also satellite- based rainfall information. It can create river channel networks based on digital elevation data, estimate parameters for a default runoff-analysis engine, and display output results. ICHARM is planning to provide training seminars for potential users and conduct joint research with overseas governmental agencies and other organization to help them independently important a flood forecasting system based on hydrologic data they observed. IFAS is free downloadable at IFAS site.
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Basinwide water- and material-cycle modeling (WEP model)
The WEP (Water and Energy transfer Processes) hydrologic model has been proven suited for analyzing water and energy budgets in both agricultural and semi-urbanized river basins. The ongoing research project involves further enhancing the intrinsic WEP model by incorporating process-based nutrient dynamic and sediment transport simulation modules, targeting integrated water- and material-cycle modeling. This will enable further specific applications of the model in appraising effect of natural and human-induced impacts, such as urbanization, agriculture and other social/economic activities, and simultaneously addressing water quality issues. Thus, the model will support the early recognition of basinwide water and material cycle degradation and the development of sustainable management perspective and guideline at catchment scale.
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Innovative Program of Climate Change Projection for the 21st Century (KAKUSHIN Program)
To address worldwide concerns over global warming and its potential impacts on water-related disasters, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has launched an initiative called the "KAKUSHIN program." ICHARM has been part of the "Extreme Event Projection Team" to perform climate projections for the near future and the end of the 21st century using the 20km mesh super high-resolution Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM) developed by the Meteorological Research Institute (MRI) of Japan. Under the initiative, ICHARM is involved in the research project entitled "Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on Flood Disaster Risk and Adaptation Measures for the Globe and Specific Vulnerable Areas." The project includes the following sub-research areas using AGCM outputs; 1) detailed analysis on AGCM output; 2) development of a risk assessment system integrated with hydrological and flood inundation models; 3) introduction of new flood risk induces; and 4) assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation measures for the entire globe and specific vulnerable areas.
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Development of an automatic measurement system of water / sediment discharge
One of the challenges in discharge measurement is to fide method for accurately understanding river-bed variation during flooding. Conventionally, the pre- and post-flood river-beds are compared, and whichever shows the larger cross- sectional area is employed to calculate the water discharge. From a hydraulic viewpoint, however, this may not produce reliable results because the cross-sectional area probably peaks during flooding, though it has been impossible to measure its mid-flood fluctuation using conventional devices. It has been considered equally impossible to sediment discharge during flooding although it is one of the most fundamental data in terms of river planning and management. To solve these issues, ICHARM has started a project to develop an automatic measurement system for water / sediment discharge.
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Other Topics
World Water Development Report III side publication
"Water Risks and Disaster," a side publication of the World Water Development Report III, will be completed in August 2009 as a collaborative work of ICHARM, UN/ISDR, UNESCO, WMO, and UNU with assistance from WWAP.
Flood risk management
ICHARM is developing a method to assess the effectiveness of flood-risk reduction measures. The method will be helpful to propose appropriate countermeasures for flood risk reduction in developing countries.
Sustainable tsunami countermeasures for developing countries
ICHARM is involved in a research project to analyze and evaluate disaster risks due to tsunamis and storm surges in specific cities. Based on the risk analysis, the centre is further planning to propose coping strategies using coastal vegetation, develop teaching materials for tsunami disaster prevention and propose guidelines for tsunami hazard mapping for developing countries.
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