On March 25, 2024, the 1st Plenary Meeting of “Platform on Water Resilience and Disasters in Thailand” was held in Bangkok, Thailand. ICHARM has been supporting the country in disaster risk reduction and resilience enhancement through various opportunities, such as the Typhoon Committee and the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development project titled “Regional Resilience Enhancement through Establishment of Area-BCM at Industry Complexes in Thailand” (SATREPS Area-BCM), which is led by Nagoya Institute of Technology. To achieve further cross-sectoral collaboration and implement cutting-edge science in society for these purposes, water-related stakeholders in Thailand have decided to establish the Platform on Water Resilience and Disaster. The platform project is one of the important projects promoted by the International Flood Initiative, for which ICHARM serves as the secretariat.
The meeting was attended by a total of 81 participants from 16 organizations. It began with opening remarks by Dr. Surasri Kudtimonton, the secretary-general of the Office of the National Water Resources (ONWR), Mr. SUZUKI Kazuya, the chief representative of JICA Thai Office, and Mr. MARUICHI Daisuke, the economic affairs officer of Disaster Risk Reduction at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). This was followed by presentations by four high-level speakers: Dr. Thanet Somboon, the director of the Bureau of Water Management and Hydrology at the Royal Irrigation Department (RID); Ms. Payao Mungngam, the deputy director-general for technical services at the Thailand Meteorological Department (TMD); Dr. Boyboon Rassamethes, the director of the Hydro-Informatics Institute (HII); and Dr. KOIKE Toshio, the executive director of ICHARM. Ms. Supinda Wattanakarn, the director of the Hydrology Division at RID, then explained activities under Annual Operation Plan 7, “Flood Resilience Enhancement through the Platform on Water Resilience and Disasters,” which is one of the activities planned by the Typhoon Committee’s Working Group on Hydrology. She also proposed a roadmap to achieve the plan under the platform.
More presentations continued on ongoing projects, addressing the SATREPS Area-BCM project, a near-real-time flood forecasting system, which is developed and implemented by Chulalongkon University, and the platform projects in other regions, such as the facilitator training in the Philippines. The meeting then moved on to presentations on activities related to governance, systems, and capacity building by Thai agencies: the Department of Climate Change and Environment (CCE), TMD, HII, ONWR, the Department of Water Resources of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (DWR), the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), the Thailand Department of Disaster Prevention & Mitigation (DDPM), Chulalongkon University, and Kasetsart University.
After the series of presentations, Executive Director KOIKE facilitated a discussion session. The participants actively discussed scientific topics, such as what data, i.e., satellite, in-situ or other data, should be used for what purposes and what components should be added to the platform activities. At the end of the meeting, the participants agreed that ONWR will lead the development of the platform implementation plan and that a second meeting will be held once the plan is ready. ICHARM will continue to provide the necessary support to successfully implement the platform in Thailand, utilizing experiences from other project regions.
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