4-2. Seminars and Training Course
4-2-1 JICA Training Course: “Comprehensive Disaster
Management for Central Asia and Caucasus 2012”
Central Asia and the Caucasus frequently experience disasters such as floods,droughts,landslides, and earthquakes, some of which extend across several countries. Also, heavy snowfallin the winter can lead to flooding when mountain glaciers thaw in the warmer seasons. Thus,
these regions have common concerns in terms of disaster risk management.
The Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC) conducted a training course for disastermanagement officials from Central Asia and the Caucasus from 25 June to 4 August withcooperation from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Kansai International Center.
This course has been held nine times since the program was launched, and it aims to convey basic
knowledge and experiences related to natural disaster management, and to further promote theimplementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) in the trainees' countries. Trainees
were asked to identify a major problem in their own countries and to formulate an action plan foraddressing it. The course was conducted in Russian, with eight central and local government
officials representing five countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan inCentral Asia, and Armenia in the Caucasus.

Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Town Watching

Participants attended lectures and visited central and municipal government agencies, research
institutes, a meteorological organization, a broadcasting company, a medical institution, a disastermanagement base, private companies, and a UN office in order to comprehensively enhance theirunderstanding of the disaster management system. They also participated in community activities,
such as “Town Watching,” which involved hazard mapmaking, and went on an excursion to theShikoku Mountain Range where landslide and erosion control countermeasures are being
implemented. In addition, they visited Sendai-city, Natori-city, and Minamisanriku-town, all ofwhich were affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami on 11 March 2011, to see
the recovery status and lesson learned in those locations. It is hoped that the participants will
make good use of the knowledge, technologies, and methods they learned during this training
course to implement various projects and help strengthen the disaster management systems in28

4. Human Resource Development

their home countries.
ADRC would like to express its sincerest gratitude to all the organizations that contributed tothe success of this course.

4-2-2 JICA Training Course: “Comprehensive Disaster Risk
Management”
From 7 January to 22 February 2013, ADRC, in collaboration with JICA, conducted the JICA
Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Course for 10 countries, namely China, Fiji, Haiti,Indonesia, Jamaica, Mauritius, Myanmar, Philippines, Solomon Islands, and the PalestinianAuthority. Fourteen government officials in charge of disaster risk reduction and one university
lecturer took part in the training. This course aimed to help participants formulate and further
develop disaster management plans in their own countries based on the concept of total disasterriskmanagement,

byenhancing

theirunderstanding of the disaster management
systems adopted by the central and local
governments of Japan.
During the training, participants attended
a series of lectures on such topics as theJapanese disaster management system at thecentral and local levels,Japanese measuresagainst flooding, sediment disasters, andearthquakes,

schooldisastereducation,community-based disaster risk management, the role of the media in disaster risk reduction, andrecovery from natural disasters. In addition, they participated in a drill conducted by a Disaster
Prevention Welfare Community in Kobe and the ADRC’s town watching exercise, in addition tovisiting tsunami-affected areas of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The trainees showed great interest in Japanese disaster management systems and efforts at
disaster risk reduction and were keen to learn from every lecture and exercise offered during thistraining course. It is hoped that the participants will make good use of the knowledge andmethods they learned during this training course to help strengthen the disaster management
systems in their home countries. ADRC would like to express its sincerest gratitude to all of theorganizations that contributed to the success of this course.

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4-2-3 JICA Training Course: “Raising Awareness of DisasterReduction”
From 8 January to 8 February 2013, ADRC, in collaboration with JICA, conducted a JICA
training course on “Raising Awareness of Disaster Reduction” for government officials in chargeof disaster risk reduction at the central and local government levels. Representatives from thecountries of Brazil, Chili, Colombia, Honduras, Myanmar, Viet Nam, PNG, Philippines, andTurkey took part in this training (12 trainees from 9 countries). The primary objective of thetraining was to establish concrete disaster reduction measures tailored to each participant’scountry, utilizing knowledge and methods gained from the training.
During the training, participants learned
the roles to be played by the various relevantorganizations, such as local authorities,
academicorganizations,

theJapanMeteorological Agency, mass media, andNPOs,

whileattending

lecturesandoccasionally visiting related facilities andorganizations. The training included thefollowing specific activities:(1) town watching and hazard map
creation, in which the trainees explored a certain area ofdowntown, identified risks, and came up with solutions,(2) a visit to the disaster-stricken area of the Great East Japan Earthquake(3) lectures on the formation of action plans, during which the trainees developed their ownaction plans.
The trainees are expected not only to carry out their action plans upon returning home, but also
to apply the knowledge and methods they learned during their training and to promote efforts toraise awareness of disaster risk reduction measures.

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