Category: Berita Internasional

In the late 1980s, a Japanese scientist named Koji Minoura stumbled on a medieval poem that described a tsunami so large it had swept away a castle and killed a thousand people. Intrigued, Minoura and his team began looking for paleontological evidence of the tsunami beneath rice paddies, and discovered not one but three massive, earthquake-triggered waves that had wracked the Sendai coast over the past three thousand years.

In a 2001 paper, Minoura concluded that the possibility of another tsunami was significant. But Tokyo Electric Power was slow to respond to the science, leaving the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant unprepared for the 15-meter wave that inundated it in 2011. The result was a $188 billion natural disaster. More than 20,000 people died.

For the past several decades, paleo-hydrologist Victor Baker of the University of Arizona has been using techniques similar to Minoura’s to study the flood history of the Colorado Plateau. Like Minoura, he’s found that floods much larger than any in recorded history are routine occurrences. And like Minoura, he feels his research is being largely ignored by agencies and public utilities with infrastructure in the path of such floods.

Earlier this month, when a spillway at the nation’s tallest dam in Oroville, California, nearly buckled under the pressure of record rainfall, the consequences of under-estimating flood risks were brought into sharp relief. Dams aren’t built to withstand every curveball nature can throw — only the weather events that engineers deem most likely to occur within the dam’s lifespan. When many Western dams were built in the mid-20th century, the best science to determine such probabilities came from historical records and stream gauges.

But that record only stretches back to the late 1800s, a timespan Baker calls “completely inadequate.” Today, technology allows scientists to reconstruct thousands of years of natural history, giving us a much clearer picture of how often super-floods occur. “The probability of rare things is best evaluated if your record is very long,” Baker explains.

By combing the Colorado River, the Green River and others in the Southwest for sediment deposits and other flood evidence and then carbon-dating the results, Baker has concluded the short-term record severely underestimates the size and frequency of large floods. On the Upper Colorado near Moab, Utah, Baker and his team estimated the average 500-year flood at roughly 246,000 cubic feet per second, more than double the 112,000 cfs that scientists had estimated drawing on the stream gage record alone. Baker’s calculations put the 100-year flood at 171,000 cfs, also much greater than the previous estimate of 96,000 cfs. In comparison, legendary flooding in 1983 and 1984 that nearly overwhelmed Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam, just downstream, peaked at just 125,000 cfs. (The dam has been bolstered since then, and today engineers say it can handle flows up to 220,000 cfs.)

In California, too, super-floods may be more common than previously thought. United States Geological Survey hydrologist Michael Dettinger and UC Berkeley paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram have studied the paleo-flood record across a broad swath of California and discovered that such floods happen at least every 200 years, and maybe more frequently. The last one was in 1862. Thousands of people died, towns were submerged and the state’s economy was devastated, yet it was nowhere near the worst: One flood in the 1600s was at least twice as big.

In 2013, Dettinger and Ingram wrote in Scientific American that California was due for another huge water year. Their prediction has proven prescient. So much rain and snow has pounded California this winter that as of Feb. 21, half the state was under flood, rain or snow warnings. Creeks are overflowing their banks and flooding homes, and water managers were forced to spill excess water over the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway for the first time in the dam’s 49-year history. On the night of Feb. 12, the sediment-choked water began eroding a hole in the spillway, threatening to release a wall of water. More than 180,000 residents fled to higher ground.

Luckily, emergency crews were able to patch the spillway, and people trickled back home. But Oroville isn’t alone — across the country, some 2,000 dams whose failure could cause loss of life are in need of repair, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. And in many ways, Californians dodged a bullet: this winter’s precipitation was nowhere near as heavy as the storms Dettinger and Ingram have studied, and yet if Oroville’s reservoir hadn’t been depleted by years of drought, floodwaters could have easily overwhelmed the dam.

Does this mean dams like Oroville and Glen Canyon need to be fortified to withstand bigger storms? Officials from the Bureau of Reclamation are confident that Glen Canyon, at least, is equipped to handle even “extremely large hydrologic events.” And The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reluctant to apply paleo-hydrology research to existing infrastructure, in part because we’ve altered rivers so much that some Corps’ scientists believe ancient flood records are no longer realistic indicators of current risks.

But Baker believes it would be foolhardy to not at least create contingency plans for the possible failure of some of the West’s biggest dams. That Japanese officials were warned about Fukushima and didn’t act is “an embarrassment,” Baker adds. “We may have some similar things occurring in the United States, if we don’t seriously pay attention to this science.”

Krista Langlois is a correspondent with High Country News

over the last two weeks, heavy rains pushed water levels at Santa Clara County’s largest reservoir into the danger zone, with officials warning it could overflow.

That happened over the weekend, sending massive amounts of water into the Coyote Creek, which runs through the heart of San Jose.

By Tuesday, the creek was overflowing at numerous locations, inundating neighborhoods, flooding hundreds of homes and forcing the frantic evacuations of more than 14,000 residents, who remained out of their homes Wednesday.

The worst flooding to hit Silicon Valley in a century left San Jose reeling and residents angry about why they were not given more warning that a disaster was imminent. Even city officials on Wednesday conceded they were caught off guard by the severity of the flooding and vowed a full investigation into what went wrong.

“If the first time a resident is aware that they need to get out of a home is when they see a firefighter in a boat, then clearly there has been a failure,” said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. “There is no question that we’ll need to do things differently next time.”

Late Wednesday, Assistant City Manager Dave Sykes said officials had learned that the information they had on the capacity of Coyote Creek channel was not accurate. He also said the city was working with the Santa Clara Valley Water District to determine whether debris caused blockages that contributed to flooding.

“The creek spilled over the banks faster and higher than anybody expected,” said city spokesman David Vossbrink.

Residents told harrowing stories of water flowing into homes and flooding streets. Many had to be rescued by boat. Some said they were surprised they did not get urgent warnings about the extent of the flooding.

“They didn’t say it was going to go up as high as it did,” said Louis Silva, 48. He said that his possessions were swallowed up in the flood and that the city should have warned people about the scale of the disaster with a cellphone text alert or by knocking on doors.

“They should’ve put the footwork in to show the urgency of the situation,” Silva said. “It hurt everyone. … When Mother Nature shows up, she shows up.”

Dawn Rogers, 47, said she was in the mandatory evacuation zone but decided to hunker down instead of leave. She watched as firefighters took a boat down the street to rescue residents in homes that were flooded.

By 1 p.m. Tuesday, residents were rushing to fill up their cars with priceless valuables.

“It was scary,” Rogers said. “Being in a drought for all these years, you don’t ever think you’re ever in danger of a flood.”

Rob Souza, 49, thought he was prepared. He knew exactly where the floodwaters had previously risen on his William Street property, just west of Coyote Creek.

He spent eight hours Monday painstakingly building 3-foot walls of sandbags to protect his newly renovated cottage and his two-story home.

But by Tuesday morning, rising waters burst through the first sandbag wall, wrecking the cottage. Then Souza watched as the water rose to two feet above his home’s windowsill.

“It was like I was looking at an aquarium,” Souza said.

Then a window broke.

And then, Souza said, “it was all over.”

Anderson Reservoir, which is located in Morgan Hill about 22 miles south of downtown San Jose, had been releasing as much water as possible through its main outlet since Jan. 9, said Rachel Gibson, a spokeswoman for Santa Clara Valley Water District. The district was releasing water at a rate of 420 cubic feet per second through the reservoir’s outlet.

“We were trying to flood out as much water as we could in advance of any storms,” Gibson told reporters. “We have been pummeled by a number of storms since Jan. 9, so Anderson Reservoir was slowly filling up because more water was coming into it than we could practically let out of that outlet.”

Santa Clara water’s chief operating officer, Jim Fiedler, said his agency had been working in recent days with San Jose city officials on possible flood control options in case of a major event. He said the district had been in regular contact with city officials.

The situation came to a head over the weekend, when another round of heavy rain sent Anderson Reservoir over its tipping point, causing water to spill out of the lake and into Coyote Creek.

The first major flooding occurred Tuesday in the Rock Springs area of San Jose. San Jose firefighters paddled on rafts and waded through the chest-deep deluge, rescuing hundreds of residents trapped in homes and in trees.

Evacuation centers were set up at two community centers, where more than 300 residents stayed overnight. Two high schools were converted into overnight shelters, with dry clothes, food and cots.

Meanwhile, a damaged levee allowed water to flow onto U.S. 101 on Tuesday, forcing its temporary closure.

Coyote Creek slithers its way northwest from the reservoir to San Jose’s doorstep, where it proceeded to flood neighborhood after neighborhood, carving a destructive path through the heart of the city.

The creek crested to a height of 13.6 feet at a South San Jose river gauge point on Tuesday evening — nearly four feet above flood stage. The height shattered a previous record that had stood since 1922.

“This is a once-in-a-100-year flood event,” National Weather Service meteorologist Roger Gass said, referring to Coyote Creek’s surging height in South San Jose.

By Wednesday, the creek was no longer rising, but it was too late for some evacuees. 

City officials said some residents could be allowed home as early as Wednesday night, though Liccardo had warned earlier in the day that the water was highly contaminated with fuel, oil and possible sewage and posed a potential health risk. 

Officials said that on Thursday they would focus on assessing the damage and getting residents back home.

The approximately 14,000 people under mandatory evacuations hailed mostly from central San Jose. Evacuation advisories were also issued to 36,000 residents in a zone that covered a business and industrial area along a roughly seven-mile stretch of Coyote Creek.

By Wednesday evening, city officials had lifted some mandatory evacuations for homes north of Interstate 280. They also revised the number of residents impacted by evacuation advisories down to 22,000.

“We haven’t really had anything quite like this before,” Vossbrink said.

YAOUNDE, 13 February 2017 – Collective action by regional organisations is a key means to help countries reduce their risk of disasters, and the Economic Community of Central African States is stepping up its efforts to rein in the impact of hazards amid rising pressure from climate change.

The ECCAS secretariat, plus its 11 member states and partners have together set out a disaster risk management and climate change action plan to be implemented over the course of this year.

The ECCAS groups Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and Sao Tome and Principe. Its member states include some of the least developed countries in the world.

Common disasters in their region number epidemics, droughts, floods, and storms.

Out of a total of 36 countries worldwide with ‘very high’ and ‘high’ risk profiles, half of them are African, according to the INFORM Index for Risk Management. Central African Republic, Chad, and Democratic Republic of Congo are in the top 10 ranking for the highest overall disaster risks.

Central African Republic and Chad are among the 10 countries globally facing the highest levels of risk in the Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas. Of the 32 countries identified globally as the most vulnerable in the atlas, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad and Democratic Republic of Congo are also at ‘extreme risk’ in the Food Security Risk Index and exhibit high levels of poverty and/or conflict and displacement, all of which compound the potential impact of hazards.

Countries around the world raised the bar for disaster risk reduction and climate change action in 2015, when they adopted an interlocking set of agreements as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The accords included the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Fifth Session of the Central Africa Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction, in December in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, convened to focus on the need to synergise the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement in order to implement the Central Africa Strategy on Risk Prevention and Disaster Management.

“The regional platform placed under the aegis of ECCAS is a crucial body that allows stakeholders to share their achievements and constraints and to jointly face the challenges posed by disasters in a coordinated and harmonised way,” said Ms. Elisabeth Huybens, Director of the World Bank Office in Cameroon.

A total of 75 representatives drawn from ECCAS states, national focal points in disaster risk reduction, climate, water and meteorology, UNISDR, the World Bank Group’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), civil society and the Parliamentarians Network for Resilience to Disasters in Central Africa (REPARC) attended the meeting.

The session came just weeks after the adoption of the ‘Programme of Action for the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 in Africa’ at the Sixth Session of Africa Regional Platform and Fifth High Level Meeting on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in November in Mauritius.

One of the areas spotlighted in Yaoundé was the ECCAS disaster risk reduction data base, which will support the development of policies, strategies, institutions, early warning system and human resources was completed and validated.

Member States were also called upon to develop and strengthen disaster risk reduction frameworks and dialogue among all stakeholders, to ensure for better synergy in disaster resilience actions. They were also requested to ensure that their national strategies are developed and aligned with the Sendai Framework and other global agreements.

To ensure greater impact on policy decisions, the meeting also decided that REPARC – which was launched in 2015 with support from UNISDR and GFDRR – be involved in a multi-year programme entitled ‘Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities’, funded by the European Union in support of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States.

The recommendations are to be implemented before the next ECCAS platform, planned this October.

THE Metro and some schools have been evacuated after a number of earthquakes struck central Italy near the capital Rome.

The first hit at around 10:25am local time with its epicentre pinpointed to just 69 miles North East of the historic city, just ten miles from Maltignano at a magnitude of 5.3 on the Richter scale.

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There are currently no reports of deaths or serious damage being sustained but the Metro has been evacuated as a result of the tremors.

Residents of the Italian capital described their homes and offices shaking as the tremor struck.

Small seismic events have been felt in the ancient city for several weeks but today’s was the largest in months.

This month’s floods are a worrisome reminder of the increasing uncertainty of extreme weather events. Thailand’s flood season usually ends in November, but this year, influenced by a low depression area and a strong northeast monsoon, widespread flooding in the south of the country has killed more than 90 people, affected over 330,000 households, and resulted in widespread asset losses.

Far from being an anomaly, however, the unpredictability of these extreme weather events may become the norm. Using a United Nations global methodology to estimate future disaster losses, we anticipate that average annual losses in Thailand due to floods will reach more than US$2.5 billion by 2030, or 0.65% of the country’s 2015 GDP, which is the equivalent of 2.6% of gross fixed capital formation, and 2% of gross savings.

The final impact on Thailand’s GDP for 2017 will depend on the duration of the floods. To date, the worst affected sector is rubber, which accounts for 1.5% of GDP and 2.4% of export revenues. The Rubber Authority of Thailand estimates that approximately 10% of the country’s rubber production has been lost so far.

As Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of rubber, accounting for 38% of world exports, a tighter global market supply may result in an increase in prices, which would somewhat mute revenue losses. Nevertheless, based on climate outlook forecasts which expected the floods to recede by the end of January, a loss of 10 to 15 billion baht could still be expected.

Measures can and must be taken to minimise the impact of these disasters.

The El Nino climate phenomena has resulted in both prolonged drought and floods in quick succession, with poor farmers in particular, bearing the brunt. The exposure of rubber farmers in southern Thailand to severe drought in 2015 and 2016 and the current floods signals a new norm of complex disaster risk.

Poverty is a contributing factor in vulnerability to these disasters because it limits income earning options. The poor are much more likely to cope by reducing spending on education and health, which in turn further weakens their recovery and reinforces the transmission of inter-generational poverty in irreversible ways. Monetary values attached to disaster losses seriously underestimate the links between poverty and disasters.

Last November, the 7th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Climate Outlook Forum predicted a strong northeast monsoon, and the Meteorological Department forecast medium and short range floods, which helped ministries and provincial governments prepare for various flood scenarios. Nevertheless, experience demonstrates that early warning messages tend to become less effective when they reach “the last mile”.

This is not because of the lack of preparedness on the ground but rather because of the overall content of early warning messages and the way risk is communicated. Often there is a lack of communication on not only the severity of impacts, but also on what specific areas, communities, and assets are most at-risk and likely to be most affected. In other cases, communities may not receive information in time, or they may receive unreliable risk information from various media sources, including social media, which can create confusion.

To prompt action at the community level, risk information needs to be both tailored and standardised. Calibrating these two requirements is central to maintaining the credibility of risk information. Finding the right balance can be challenging, so in recognition of this the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s (Escap) Multi-donor Trust Fund on Tsunami, Disaster and Climate Preparedness has prioritised financial support for initiatives that have built capacity in impact-based forecasting and last mile outreach.

With the intensification of climate change effects, disasters are increasingly trans-boundary phenomena. This demands trans-boundary solutions. Actions taken on a regional cooperative basis can be particularly effective because the benefits are greater than the sum of individual responses.

Consequently, Escap has created a climate risk communication platform, the Monsoon Forum, for improved understanding of climate outlooks and seasonal forecasts in high risk-low capacity countries such as Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. Through South-South cooperation, Escap will tap into Thailand’s experience and knowledge in short and medium range forecasts and early warning communication systems, while continuing to support the integration of innovative tools and techniques for forecasting and monitoring tropical cyclones through the Panel on Tropical Cyclones and the Typhoon Committee, in partnership with the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

In partnership with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk and the United Nations Development Programme, Escap coordinates UN intervention at all stages of the disaster cycle, while Asean and the UN have adopted a Joint Strategic Plan of Action on Disaster Management. These multiple initiatives have undoubtedly helped countries to be better prepared to face disasters.

Escap will further analyse these issues in depth in the 2017 edition of the Asia-Pacific Disaster Report to be launched in October. The report will explore viable and effective methods of building the poor’s resilience to disasters, which is key to achieving the 2030 Agenda’s aspiration of leaving no-one behind in Asia and the Pacific.

source: http://www.bangkokpost.com

Glenn McGillivray is managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

There is often a perception that the costs associated with natural disasters are paid out of many pockets, including governments of all levels, insurers, property owners and others.

The reality is that when there is a catastrophe, taxpayers are generally left to cover a substantial portion of the expenses, both directly and indirectly. Not only must they pay the insurance deductible for their own property damage and pay out of pocket for any uninsured damage they experience, but their tax dollars must also go toward paying for first response, evacuation costs, damage to public infrastructure, overtime expenses for government and/or public utility employees, and government-disaster assistance.

Consider the 2013 Alberta flood or last May’s wildfire in Fort McMurray, which prompted the federal government to direct a reported $2.8-billion and $300-million, respectively, to Alberta for disaster assistance. These are substantial unbudgeted amounts that are ultimately funded by all Canadians.

But it needn’t be this way, as there are now many traditional and non-traditional reinsurance products that can be used to transfer all but the very biggest risks off the backs of taxpayers and onto the balance sheets of some of the world’s largest and most capable risk-transfer experts.

What’s more, there are also products that can be used to smooth annually budgeted government expenses that prove to be quite volatile. Imagine an insurance product that kicks in if a city’s snow-removal expenses exceed a certain threshold, or one that reimburses a municipality or public utility if storm-related overtime costs exceed a certain amount? How about a simple stop-loss cover that kicks in if federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAAs) exceed a certain amount, or what if the DFAAs were laid off to the private reinsurance industry altogether? What about a parametric cover that kicks in if a rainstorm, windstorm or snowstorm of a certain size affects a community?

One of the challenges that has to be overcome is that governments typically do not leverage the many reinsurance and financial instruments that are available to them, possibly because of a reluctance to deal with the up-front costs of implementing the solution (such as having to pay an annual insurance premium for a policy that may not be triggered).

But it may just be a matter of breaking old habits.

While average people tend to be risk averse (and, therefore, purchase insurance to ensure a soft landing if a loss occurs), governments tend to be risk neutral, not insuring their assets (or insuring only certain asset classes) and usually paying for losses directly out of public coffers. This is particularly true as you go up the food chain (municipalities, especially small ones, often at least partially insure their assets while more senior levels of government tend not to).

But governments are showing a desire to get away from this model, as paying for increasingly costlier disaster-related expenses makes it challenging to finance pet projects and/or balance the books. Indeed, likely as a direct result of the 2013 Alberta flood, the federal government altered the DFAAs. Now, provinces and territories affected by a significant loss event have to absorb significantly more of the costs before obtaining disaster assistance from the federal government.

Aside from questions regarding risk aversion vs. risk neutrality, it appears that most governments are not used to thinking in terms of mitigating risk beyond traditional types of insurable losses. It isn’t even clear whether governments know that they can transfer all kinds of risk to reinsurance companies.

On the flipside, some reinsurers are not quite used to approaching certain governments about how they can help manage and temper expenses associated with natural disasters and other expenses related to severe weather. And while there are many examples around the world where private reinsurers work well with governments in the creation of very innovative risk-transfer programs, there just isn’t a long tradition of such collaboration in Canada. But this could easily be changed.

With governments at all levels showing a desire to get out of the business of financing natural-disaster losses and other volatile expenses such as snow removal and wildfire suppression, they need to be open to taking advantage of the reinsurance industry in order to lighten the financial burden that is placed on taxpayers.

This is an imperative, as the frequency and severity of natural disasters is increasing in Canada while the pressure is on for governments to cut taxes while also grow services and invest in public infrastructure.

The EU’s emergency response to natural disasters and major disease outbreaks around the world is generally timely and effective, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, 16 January 2017 – Seven years on from the devastating earthquake in Haiti, countries from across the Caribbean are working hard to reduce the risks posed by seismic threats, as part of their wider drive towards sustainable development.

The magnitude-7.0 quake of 12 January, 2010, claimed around 150,000 lives and affected over three million people.

Earthquakes are the single-most destructive form of natural hazard in the Caribbean. Many countries within the region face the specter of future quakes, which occur when strain accumulation on segments of the adjacent tectonic plate boundary exceeds breaking point. To a large extent, the resulting damage will depend on the choice of risk management measures – notably building standards – that are implemented to avoid or reduce vulnerability to strong shaking.

Efforts to improve such risk management have gathered pace over recent months. Over 150 participants from around the region met at the Caribbean Urban Seismic Risk Forum in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in September 2016.

The forum offered an provided an opportunity for Caribbean countries to chart a path to sustainable development through the exchange of experiences, information-sharing and the joint development of the ‘Regional Roadmap on Urban Seismic Risk Management in the Caribbean’.

“It provides the basis for the kind of concerted action that is needed by a wide range of stakeholders in the region. In any Caribbean island, a much larger proportion of the buildings and infrastructure were likely built before effective seismic codes were implemented and less than 2% of this stock is replaced per year. For this reason, the threat of damage to any one nation is potentially catastrophic,” said Dr. Richard Robertson, Director of the Seismic Research Centre of the University of the West Indies, whose institution was part of the team that crafted the Roadmap.

At the session, Haiti’s Minister of the Interior and Local Authorities François Anick Joseph emphasized the importance of managing seismic risk in a region that is seeing fast-pace urbanization, compounding the vulnerability of small, developing economies.

The Roadmap will assist stakeholders from local, national and regional levels as well as public, private and civil society sectors, to identify, implement and report on actions taken in their various spheres of work on risk governance, understanding urban seismic risk, mitigation and preparedness, response, recovery and reconstruction, public awareness and education, risk finance and transfer, and business continuity planning.

Mr. Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) lauded the plan.

“I would like to reiterate CDEMA’s support for the utilization of the Roadmap from a regional lens, including the coordinating, monitoring and reporting scope of involvement in the future,” he said.

“There is certainly evidence that the operational coordination capacity for adverse events has improved in Haiti. However, we still lament the fact that building standards have not advanced at the pace to ensure that new construction is more resistant to seismic events certainly of the magnitude Haiti experienced on January 12, 2010. The Roadmap presents an opportunity for this issue to be advanced both at the policy and programmatic level within Haiti so that in the future we may see a drastic reduction in mortality to earthquakes,” he added.

The Roadmap was developed with challenges in mind such as poor risk governance, insufficient preparedness, and the need for improved scientific knowledge in order to refine regional natural hazards maps, ineffective building regulation framework, limited enforcement of building codes and natural hazards damage mitigation as part of the planning system, and inadequate risk financing.

Mr. Ricardo Mena, Head of UNISDR’s Americas office, commended Haiti and the region for taking the initiative to increase resilience in urban areas and thereby implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year global blueprint adopted in 2015.

Experts from across the region including the Haitian state agencies, The Seismic Research Centre of University of the West Indies, the Council of Caribbean Engineering Organizations, the Mona Earthquake Unit, the Puerto-Rico Seismic Network and representatives of National Disaster Management Organizations provided guidance on the state of play along with recommendations of key next steps to improve the current status of urban seismic risk management in Caribbean countries.

Mr. Fritz Deshommes, Rector of the State University of Haiti, stressed the importance of scientific research as the basis for decision-making processes. “The University, the State, the technical and financial partners, and civil society entities, must work in symbiosis for efficient seismic risk reduction action in urban areas in the Caribbean region,” he said.

Work on the Roadmap was financially supported by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance.

Highlights

• The World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) are supporting Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan in different aspects of disaster risk management (DRM), including establishment of a crisis management center, seismic risk assessments, and institutional capacity building to increase the resilience of critical infrastructure against recurring natural hazards.

• Delegates from these three countries attended Japan’s 36th Comprehensive Disaster Prevention Drill of Nine Prefectural and City Governments in Saitama City, an exercise that mobilized more than 10,000 participants from 136 stakeholders including governments, private sector, schools and NGOs.

• Japan’s expertise and knowledge in DRM will continue to support Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan to enhance disaster preparedness measures and urban resilience policies.

Countries of the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region are regularly affected by adverse natural events. Over the last 30 years, floods and earthquakes alone caused 50,000 fatalities, affected nearly 25 million people, and resulted in US$80 billion in damage. While disaster profiles and vulnerabilities vary across Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan; all three countries, however, share in common a predominant seismic risk.

Given the seismic profile of several countries in the ECA region, the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), with support from the Government of Japan and other donors, recently invited government representatives from Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan to take part in an Experts Visit to Japan. This visit provided an opportunity for participants to improve their respective crisis management systems by learning first-hand about Japan’s experience in disaster preparedness and response systems at national and local levels. Japan, a country that has accumulated much knowledge and operational experience in disaster risk management (DRM) through its own experience with recurring natural disasters, has actively promoted cooperation at a global level to reduce the number of disaster-related victims. Through “Japan-World Bank Program for Mainstreaming DRM in Developing Countries”, the World Bank DRM Hub, Tokyo, GFDRR, and the Government of Japan have been working closely to mainstream DRM in national development planning and investment, including World Bank operations, by capitalizing on Japanese expertise and best practices.

The level of coordination and dedication displayed during public awareness activities in Japan was one of the most impressive features of the visit, according to visiting delegates from the ECA region. In Japan, these can also be included within wider commemorative events such as disaster simulation drills. The Government of Japan held the National Simulation Drills at state level and 36th Comprehensive Disaster Prevention Drill of Nine Prefectural and City Governments, hosted by Saitama City on September 1, 2016, a coordinated effort to simulate a comprehensive emergency response to a major earthquake in the Nankai Trough (off the central and western coast of Japan). This important exercise is normally taken place on “Disaster Prevention Day” in Japan, commemorating the devastated earthquake happened in Kanto region in 1923. On the same day, various disaster simulation drills were taken place in 36 out of 47 prefectures, and mobilized 1 million participants across the country.

Over the course of a week, Armenian, Kyrgyz, and Tajik officials engaged in discussions with a wide range of national agencies and municipal authorities in Japan, which are involved in several DRM activities:

• In Tokyo, delegates also had a Courtesy Call with the State Minister (in charge of disaster management) from the Cabinet Office of Japan – an agency responsible for supervising disaster management efforts at a national level – to discuss challenges and opportunities in implementing DRM measures. Based on observations of the simulation drill in Saitama City, the delegates committed to propose a similar exercise once they return to their respective countries. In terms of follow-up steps, the State Minister offered further collaboration between the DRM Hub, Tokyo and the Cabinet Office in disseminating Japan’s knowledge and expertise in disaster risk management.

• The delegates also met with officials from the Urban Safety Division of Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) to discuss lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, and learn more about the national system of municipal subsidies, which are used for building more resilient urban fabric.

• In their meeting with the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA), participants were particularly interested in J-ALERT, which can instantly transmit emergency information, such as earthquake and tsunami early warning, both via satellite and online from the central government to the local governments and designated communication hubs such as major media and mobile operators. The information is then immediately disseminated to local residents through various devices such as outdoor broadcasting systems and cellphones (via emails and text messages).

• The visit also featured concepts of resilient urban planning, and showed how these have evolved in Japan – also known as Bousai Machidukuri. Delegates were also able to meet with the Kobe City Government to study how the City of Kobe was able to learn from the disastrous consequences of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, and re-think their approach to improve municipal preparedness measures and streamline post-earthquake city redevelopment efforts.

• To better understand the function of risk communication measures in Japan, delegates were able to interact with a group of residents in Bunkyo neighborhood in Tokyo, which proactively promote “self-help” approach to improve emergency response capacity at the community level. The delegates also visited the Maiko High School in Kobe City to observe unique initiative to foster young leaders in the community through disaster resilience education is fully integrated into the high school curriculum.

This visit offered valuable insights that will support at-risk countries in the ECA region in mainstreaming disaster preparedness measures and urban resilience considerations into their respective policies and programs. Acknowledging the proactive approaches to DRM, which are undertaken in countries like Japan, the World Bank and GFDRR, are committed to expanding such efforts on seismic risk reduction and management in the ECA region and will continue to support the Governments of Armenia, Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan as they shift away from a reactive disaster response system to a more integrated disaster risk management and resilience-building approach.

The Experts Visit was made possible with the support of the “Japan-World Bank Program for Mainstreaming DRM in Developing Countries” through the DRM Hub, Tokyo, and by other donors. The Experts Visit also builds on the Central Asia Earthquake Risk Reduction Forum in October 2015, a collaborative effort that reviewed ongoing earthquake risk reduction efforts in central, their potential fiscal impacts, and stimulated the dialogue on risk reduction initiatives among policy makers and practitioners in the region. Over 70 policy makers, experts and practitioners from governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as development partner representatives, international experts, regional research and academic institutions, universities, civil society groups, media, and World Bank staff attended this Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan.