The second International Flood Initiative (IFI) Management Committee meeting held in Toronto, Canada
 IFI logo |
 View of Toronto |
 Scene of the meeting |
This meeting was held at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) in Toronto, Canada on May 5, on the sidelines of the “4th International Symposium on Flood Defense (ISFD4)” which was held in Toronto after this meeting.
In recent years, floods have markedly increased statistically all over the world. To effectively coordinate relevant organizations' efforts to manage floods, we need to reduce duplication as much as possible and work on the issues of sharing information and coordinating activities with each other so that we can definitively implement necessary activities in necessary fields. To that end, the International Flood Initiative (IFI), an international framework, was established in January 2007. It is designed to promote the approaches of relevant United Nations (UN) agencies and international organizations. IFI's core members are the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) and the United Nations University (UNU). The International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM) of PWRI serves as the secretariat.
In this meeting, in addition to the above organizations, officials of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), the International Association for Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR), and ICLR participated.
As a result of the meeting, the relevant organizations decided to conduct more unified and systematic activities in the fields of research, education and training, information exchange, and technology cooperation going forward. To achieve this goal, they will draw up detailed road maps and improve related activities.
(Contact: Chief Researcher, ICHARM)
Lecture held on pavement technology in Road Pavement Training session
 Outline diagram |
 Image drawing |
 Whole training |
PWRI not only conducts research but also dispatches lecturers on request for various seminars and training sessions held by other organizations in order to broadly spread our technology.
"Road Pavement Training session" is done in the Japan Construction
Training Center every year.
We held a lecture on pavement technology at the Road Pavement Training session held at the Japan Construction Training Center on April 22.
In this training session, about 30 people who are involved in pavement in private and public sectors attended a variety of lectures for five days. As a special lecture, we gave a talk on the following topics:
(1) Trend of pavement performance regularization
In the pavement field, roads were paved in accordance with the quality specification which provided usable materials and pavement thickness up until 2001. Since that time, however, pavement performance requirements, including durability and noise reduction, were set and roads have been paved in accordance with performance specifications regardless of materials. The quality specifications provide material specifications, but for performance specifications, simply put, only performance requirements must be satisfied. Therefore, they offers the following benefits:
1) High flexibility in designing; 2) Free use of new technologies and materials; and 3) More flexible response to technological innovation and globalization. We explained our point of view on the pavement performance specifications and the reasons beyond the introduction of this concept.
(2) New pavement technology
From the past performances, challenges such as the establishment of repair / reinforcement technologies and noise / environmental measures have been listed. We reported the latest pavement technologies and development trends thereof as part of our approach to solve those challenges. In recent years in particular, environmental consciousness has rapidly increased and development of a pavement technology contributing to the environmental improvement is expected. As such, we introduced thermal and heat-shield pavement and water-retention pavement as heat island measures. Furthermore, there have been expectations surrounding the consideration of performance specifications in order to create an environment that proactively adopts such technologies.
(Contact: Pavement Research Team)
"Experimental Streams Guided Walk" started by Aqua Restoration Research Center
 iPod contains video information. |
 In experimental rivers, about 30 sign panels are installed. |
 How to use the guide walk |
The Aqua Restoration Research Center (ARRC) has studied the conservation and restoration of the inland water environment using three 800m long experimental streams. Visitors are allowed to observe the streams and see the experiments and listen to our expert staff.
However, it is difficult to understand the river phenomenon in the river field observation. For example, we cannot clearly observe the underwater environment from the land because visibility is limited, and observing the fluctuation in river discharge such as floods requires proper timing.
As such, we introduced a portable terminal (iPod*) to "The Experimental
Streams Guided Walk" which contained river phenomenon that we deemed
difficult to comprehend. The habitat of the fish, flooding, experiments
carried out in the rivers, and the latest research findings are edited
to a short video clip and imported to an iPod. By playing the iPod video
corresponding to the number written on each sign panel along the river
(about 30 panels in total), visitors can watch and listen to the information
seen in the actual field.
We invited engineering undergraduates (14) of Gifu University on Friday,
May 23, 2008 and had them experience "The Experimental Streams Guided
Walk". The questionnaire provided us with following positive comments:
"It's good because we can see images of natural phenomenon that we
usually can't see." and "All participants with iPods can understand
it because iPod delivers the information without fail." On the other
hand, we had negative comments: "It's hard to see the screen outside"
and "The headset version is better".
The iPod video is available on the homepage of the ARRC and is also delivered via iTunes* Podcasts, so you can download it to your personal iPod. We will update the video as research progresses.
If you want to participate in the walk, click here (you can register for Podcasts from here as well).
* iPod and iTunes are trademarks of Apple.inc.
(Contact: Aqua Restoration Reserach Center)
Northern Road Navi (polyglot edition) revised
 Traditional Chinese edition (Abridgment) |
 Change in traffic to the website |
The “Northern Road Navi (http://n-rd.jp/)”, a general Hokkaido-wide road information site run by Civil Engineering Research Institute for Cold Region (CERI), is designed to assist road users in safely, securely, and comfortably driving roads year-round through provision of related information. This site delivers information regarding various usage scenarios and needs by combining road, weather, roadside, and area information in a sophisticated manner. This site also provides a distance-time search function and information regarding close roads, pictures of mountain paths, roadside landscapes, and roadside rest area information on routes selected from the search results.
The Northern Road Navi is not only in Japanese; the English edition was launched in 2002 and the Korean and traditional/simplified Chinese editions were set up in June 2005.
In this revision, multilingual sites were revised based on findings from site usage review to encourage foreign tourists to go sightseeing by car. The points improved include the following:
1) Information to support automobile sightseeing was enriched by providing roadmaps, roadside rest area locations, and route guidance information in an easy-to-understand manner.
2) Driving information was improved by adding links to other existing foreign language sites.
3) Sightseeing information was enhanced, delivering information about Hokkaido's attractions, including the roadside landscape information, which many foreign visitors may need.