Newsletter from the Secretariat for Preparatory
Activities of UNESCO-PWRI Centre No.1 September 17, 2004
What’s in this issue
１．Greeting from Chief Executive
２．Background and outline of the Centre-- Why water hazard? --- Action policies -３．Topics of this issue--Report of downpours inNiigata-Fukushima and Fukui
prefectures-４．Coming events related to our activities
Dr. Tadahiko SAKAMOTO PWRI Chief Executive

１．Greeting from Chief Executive
In July this year, Japan was hit by torrential downpours in Niigata, Fukushima and Fukui
prefectures. The devastating floods due to these downpours caused the loss of lot of lives andbrought the importance of disaster prevention into relief. In order to prevent damages from floods,
making predictions of spatial and time distribution of precipitation, river discharge and inundated
area is not enough. Appropriate evacuation orders should be announced by municipal governments
and people should respond to them. Thus disaster prevention includes social aspects. The process ofdisaster prevention is a precise system, in which if only one part fails to work, the whole system does
not work properly. Therefore the most important issue is to establish a disaster prevention system as
a part of social system by taking people’s behavior into account.
By the way, due to its particular topographical and climatic conditions, Japan has been making
numerous efforts to prevent water-related disasters since ancient times. Based on Japan’s
accumulated disaster prevention technologies, we are planning to establish UNESCO centre at thePublic Works Research Institute (PWRI), aiming to make contributions to prevent and mitigate
water-related disasters in the world. We take pride in playing a leading role in civil engineeringresearch in Japan and it is our great pleasure to establish such an international centre under theauspices of UNESCO. At the same time we believe that this is a good opportunity to take fulladvantage of our strengths in the international arena.
However, Japan’s technologies cannot always apply directly to foreign countries because there

1are a wide variety of countries and rivers in the world under different natural and social conditions.
Disaster prevention must be designed country by country, and river by river. In other words, we canmake the best use of our experiences but we should review them from a global point of view to makethem applicable in other countries. For this purpose, it is important for us to conduct research incollaboration with foreign colleagues, especially those from developing countries. It is not enough totransfer technologies from Japan to developing countries. We should also take joint initiatives withdeveloping countries. I think “internationalization” would refer to such interactions.
There already exist several UNESCO centres in the world. Each centre focuses on problems of
its own region such as arid and semi-arid regions, tropical regions and so forth. The centre to beestablished in Japan is expected to become a global Centre for water hazard and risk management.
Initially our centre will focus on Asia, but in the future, we hope our centre becomes a solid base ofresearch, training and information and contributes to prevent and mitigates water-related disasters in
the world.

２．Background and outline of the Centre--Why water hazard? -The table and the map attached at the end of this newsletter (Fig.1. and Fig.2) show the floods
occurred this year in the world. These figures indicate to us that floods hit somewhere in the world
all the time. If other water-related disasters such as typhoons, surges and landslides are added, thecalendar would run out of space. This shows evidence that the world severely suffers fromwater-related disasters. Once a flood occurs, it affects tens of thousands of people or sometimes
hundreds of thousands of people. Furthermore, in many countries, restoration works do not always
progress as rapidly as in Japan. In the case of the Zambezi River basin (Namibia and Zambia) andthe Ganges and Brahmaputra River basin (India and Bangladesh), flood water has not receded forseveral months. In developing countries, a lot of people lose their lives due to water-originatedepidemics after floods, and this year is no exception. The world is always affected by suchdevastating floods.
Fig.3. shows the numbers of disasters occurred in recent years by type. As this figure shows,water-related disasters are increasing. Although we cannot predict the exact number of disasters tooccur next year, it is easy to assume that this upward trend will continue further. When you facethese realities in the world, you can understand how important the risk management of water hazard
is.
Critical conditions concerning water and the importance of taking appropriate countermeasures
were recognized at numerous international events and conferences such as the World Summit on2

Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002 and the Third World Water Forum held inJapan in 2003. Following these events, it was decided that PWRI which has long experience andaccumulated knowledge in the field of water disaster prevention would establish UNESCO centre
for water hazard and risk management. In April 2004, the Secretariat for Preparatory Activities ofUNESCO-PWRI Centre was established, which is now promoting the preparatory work toward theplanned opening of the Centre in 2005.

Fig.1. World flood calendar of 2004 (from January to August)Fig.2. World flood map of 2004 (from January to August)Fig.3. Numbers of various disasters (from 1992 to 2001 )(Source: EM-DAT, CRED, University of Louvain, Belgium)-- Action policies -Ever since PWRI belonged to the former Ministry of Construction, PWRI has been conducting
a wide range of research including river improvement technologies, water resource management
technologies, water quality management technologies and so forth. PWRI’s hydrological research
has made important contributions to the world. UNESCO, U.N. Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization, on the other hand, has organized International Hydrological Programme (IHP) since1975 and has been engaged in sharing and dissemination of information as well as promoting
cooperation on a regional and international basis. UNESCO also acts as secretariat of World Water
Assessment Programme (WWAP), an ‘umbrella’ for coordinating existing UN initiatives within thefreshwater assessment sphere.
Thus UNESCO places top priority to water issues and expects Japan, valued for its accumulated
knowledge and experiences, to make contributions to the field of water- related disasters and riskmanagement. To cope with this internationally growing demand, PWRI is to establish UNESCO
centre in coordination with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) and otheragencies and research institutions concerned.

This centre is planned to carry out three pillar activities; research, training and information
networking.
As for research, by making the best use of experiences and knowledge PWRI has accumulated
over the long time, the centre will promote a broad range of studies to prevent and mitigate
water-related disasters. The research activities include hydraulic/hydrologic forecast, observation
and analysis through development of models for water-cycle and water management, andwater-related disaster management technologies under various social and economic conditions in the3world. The centre will also cope with issues associated with global climatic variability.
Concerning training, we plan to open practical and strategic training courses andcapacity-building programs for practitioners and researchers here and abroad in cooperation withuniversities and other academic organizations as well as the private sector.
Lastly as information networking activity, our Centre is planning to gather and analyze
information about water-related disasters all over the world and share gathered information both inJapan and abroad through UNESCO networks.

We believe that these three activities will be developed in a continuous and integrated manner.
For instance, research results at this Centre will be made available for other training and networking
activities, and human networks that will be formed through the training activities will become a coreof the future information network of this field. Furthermore the Centre’s information networking will
enhance flow of information, which in turn will exert good effects on research and training activitiesof the Centre. Thus, by closely linking research, training and information networking, we can expect
positive and integrated effects from each activity. In the next newsletter, we will introduce theCentre’s activity plans more in detail.

Fig.4: Pillar activities of the UNESCO centre

3. Topics of this issue-- Report of downpours in Niigata-Fukushima and Fukui prefectures-This year Japan has suffered from numerous floods. As of September 7, a record number of 7
typhoons hit Japan and 2 large scale floods occurred one after another in Niigata and Fukushima
Prefectures, and in Fukui Prefecture. We would like to briefly review on these disasters.
In the case of Niigata-Fukushima downpour, 421mm of rainfall in 24 hours was recorded atTochio observatory (Japan Meteorological Agency). Various places including Sanjo city andNakanoshima town were inundated and 15 people were died, and more than 26,000 houses wereinundated. In the case of Fukui downpour, 283mm of rainfall in 24 hours was recorded at Miyama
observatory (Japan Meteorological Agency) and Fukui city was partly inundated. Five people weredrowned or went missing and more than 14,000 houses were flooded above or below floor level. In
both cases, increased rivers discharge due to extremely heavy rainfall broke river embankments andcaused devastating damages. In Japan, due to its topographical characteristics, houses areconcentrated in alluvial plains which are subject to floods. Embankments are built to protect assets insuch plains but once they are broken, there would be extensive damages.

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In these two cases, prompt restoration of broken embankments and active participation in
restoration works of flooded houses by volunteers were highly appreciated. But removing a massive
amount of mud was difficult and it was pointed out that victims were mostly seniors. Also, thequestion of whether appropriate evacuation orders were issued by local governments and properlytransmitted to citizens has been raised. Since such devastating floods can occur at any place in Japan,
damages should be precisely investigated. Actually investigation of these disasters is in progress.
The investigation results, when made available, will be introduced in a future issue of our newsletter.

4. Coming events related to our activities
September 20-23, 2004
The 16th session of the UNESCO-IHP Intergovernmental Council (Paris, France)
Dr. Sakamoto will make a presentation on the planned establishment of the UNESCO Centre in
Japan to get the resolution of the Council to support the plan. The preparation for the International
Flood Initiative/Programme (IFI/P) will also be introduced at this opportunity.
URL : http://www.unesco.org/water/ihp/council/16th/

September 20-23, 2004
International Symposium on Living with Risks (Soul, Korea)
This Symposium is organized by the Typhoon Committee, jointly initiated by WMO and UNESCAP.
This time, it is planned to discuss the progress of "Japan Flood Hazard Map Project" led by MLIT
and Infrastructure Development Institute-Japan (IDI). A test hazard map will be produced during thesymposium.
A representative of the Secretariat is planning to join the symposium to introduce a training courseon "Flood Hazard Map", which PWRI is now preparing under JICA framework from this fiscal year.

September 27-29, 2004
International Conference on "Climate Change: a challenge or a threat for water management"(Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
In this conference organized by International Water Association (IWA), a representative from theSecretariat is planning to make a presentation on "Flood management under the climatic variability
and its future perspective in Japan". Parallel with the conference, AQUATEC international
water-related technical exhibition is held and it is expected that we are going to collect relevant
information in the world for the sake of future activities of the Centre.
URL : http://www.show-info.nl/aquatech2004/e/bez_overig130

5October 11-15, 2004
The 14th UNESCO-IHP Training Course – Hydrology in Asia – (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
A representative from the Secretariat is planning to make a presentation and discuss the Centre’s
future training courses to be effective.
URL : http://hyarc.nagoya-u.ac.jp/ihp/14ihptc.html

October 12-16, 2004
The first IWHR-PWRI Joint Workshop（Beijing, China）
China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower (IWHR) and PWRI will hold the first workshop
on flood and discuss on-going and future research collaboration. IWHR and PWRI are currently
studying good practices of retarding basin management after the 1998 Changjiang River GreatFlood.

October 25-27, 2004
International Conference on “Advances in Integrated Mekong River Management”（Vientiane, Lao PDR）
The conference is co-organized by PWRI, which is promoting a scientific and technological project
named “Research Revolution 2002”. The conference output would make a useful input for thepreparation activities of the Centre.

November 21-25, 2004
International Conference on Water Sensitive Urban Design: Cities as Catchments (Adelaide,Australia)
A representative from the Secretariat is planning to introduce Water Master Plan of the Tsurumi
River in Japan as a successful case of integrated water resource management.
URL : http://www.plevin.com.au/wsud2004/

December 13-14, 2004
International Workshop “Water and Disasters” (London, Canada)
One of the sessions will be organized by the Secretariat in cooperation with IFNet and JWF. The
output of the conference is going to be introduced at the conference in Kobe next January, seehereafter.
URL : http://www.iclr.org/pdf/First_Announcement_2004.pdf

January 18-22, 2005
World Conference on Disaster Reduction (Kobe, Japan)

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The Secretariat is now planning to discuss specific range of actions concerning water-related hazard
and its risk management in cooperation with other relevant organizations.
URL : http://www.unisdr.org/eng/wcdr/wcdr-index.htm################################################

Announcement of next issue:
The next issue, to be published around December 2004, will introduce our preparatory activities forthe establishment of the UNESCO-PWRI Centre in more detail as well as international conferences
and symposiums participated by the Secretariat.

Information:
This newsletter is distributed via E-mail. It can also be downloaded from PWRI’s Web site. Those ofyou who wish to subscribe to or unsubscribe our mailing list, please contact us by email. We
welcome any comments or requests from you, via email, for making this newsletter more effective
and informative one.

Issued by: Secretariat for Preparatory Activities of UNESCO-PWRI Centre,
Public Works Research Institute (PWRI)
1-6 Minamihara Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8516, JapanTel.: +81-29-879-6809

Fax : +81-29-879-6709

E-mail: whrm@pwri.go.jp

URL: http://www.unesco.pwri.go.jp/################################################

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Asia
Jan.
Feb.

Oceania

East Timor
Afghanistan
India
Kazakhstan

America

EuropeBolivia
New Zealand

Peru
Madagascar

Mar.
India

FijiMexico

Apr.
May

AfricaChina

Djibouti
Kenya
Namibia/Zambia

BosniaHerzegobina
RussiaCosta rica
Haiti/Dominica

India/Nepal/Jun. Bangladesh
Jul.
Aug.

Japan
Vietnam
Tajikistan
Afghanistan
North Korea
China

RumaniaFig.1. Recent flood disasters (from January to August, 2004)

Fig.2. World map of recent floods (from January to August, 2004)

8200
Number of Natural Disasters
150

100500Year

1992

1993

1994

FloodsVolcaniceruptions

1995

1996

StormsExtremetemperature

1997

1998

1999

Landslides

Droughts/famines

Forest fire

Others2000

2001

Earthquakes

Fig.3. Numbers of various disasters occurred from 1992 to 2001
(Source: EM-DAT, CRED, University of Louvain, Belgium)

Research
Participation

Results/ Outcomes
Data/
Information
Curriculum
Network

Information
Networking

Training
Knowledge

Fig.4: Pillar activities of the UNESCO-PWRI Centre

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