The 3rd Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Asia-Pacific Symposium and the 4th International Coordination Group Meeting of the GEOSS Asian Water Cycle Initiative (AWCI)

Venue: Kyoto, Japan

Date: 4-6 February 2009

Participant(s) from ICHARM: Kazuhiko Fukami (Team Leader), Tomonobu Sugiura (Senior Researcher)

The 3rd GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium was held on 4-6 February 2009 at the Kyoto Research Park in Kyoto, Japan, followed by the 4th International Coordination Group Meeting of the GEOSS Asian Water Cycle Initiative (AWCI) on 6-7 at the same venue. Team Leader Kazuhiko Fukami and Senior Researcher Tomonobu Sugiura of ICHARM participated in those two conferences.

At the GEOSS Symposium, the following six sub-sessions were held to explore how to strengthen collaboration in the improvement of observation, prediction and data sharing in the fields of climate change, water resource management, ecosystem maintenance, and disasters under the theme of "Cross-cutting Data Sharing in the Asia-Pacific Region."

• WG1:Monitoring and Predicting Climate Change
• WG2:Water Cycle in the Asia-Oceanic Region
• WG3:Monitoring Changes in Ecosystem, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
• WG4:Earth Observation and Data Sharing for Disaster Management
• WG5:Toward Actual Collaboration among Climate, Water Cycle and Disasters
• WG6:Necessity and Possibility of Observation, Forecast, and Data Sharing through the Interdisciplinary Collaboration of "Ecosystem - Climate Change - Disaster"

Fukami explained ICHRAM's activities as an example of regional coordination in the WG5 session, while Sugiura delivered a presentation entitled "IFNet-GFAS" in WG4 to explain about the utilization of satellite information to reduce flood hazards.

In the meantime, the GEOSS-AWCI meeting focused on data archiving and integration, prediction model applications and capacity building programs. At this meeting, Fukami played a leading role in "Floods WG" and made a proposal of holding training seminars using the Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS), which has been developed by ICHARM as a flood forecast system using satellite-based rainfall data for poorly gauged basins in developing countries.

ICHARM continues working on research on the effective use of satellite information, especially rainfall information, to mitigate water-related disasters in cooperation with Asian countries.