The 5th Annual Mekong Flood Forum was held on 17th - 18th May 2007 at Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. This annual forum sets a certain theme to discuss and make presentations on. The theme chosen this year was "Improving Inputs towards Medium Term Flood Forecasting and Warning in the Mekong Basin."

Dr. Takeuchi, Director, Dr. Hapurachchi, Speciality Researcher and Mr. Inomata, Researcher in Hydrologic Engineering Research Team attended the forum on behalf of ICHARM. Dr. Takeuchi presented on "GEOSS Initiative and the Flood Forecasting System of the Mekong River Basin," while Dr. Hapuarachchi presented on "Hydrologic Modeling of the Mekong River Basin Using the BTOPMC Model." Mr. Inomata presented about ICHARM activities.

ICHARM technologies and activities were

successfully introduced to the people of the riparian countries in the Mekong River Basin through our attendance and presentations.

Aiming to support practitioners, who are looking for technical supports regarding the development and implementation of Flood Hazard Map especially in developing countries, ICHARM has established a "Flood Hazard Map Help Desk (FHM-HD)". It can be accessed via ICHARM Homepage. On the same website, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and related answers will be updated in a regular basis.

Therefore, it is requested to read FAQ to get

possible answers. If it is required to ask additional or new questions, link for the Online Inquiry Form is provided on the same site.

ICHARM will try to reply individual inquiry in time and will also update the same information on FAQ column for future reference. It is hoped that the FHM-HD can provide best platform for practitioners especially from developing countries to get best answers to their technical questions in the right time and in the right manner.

The Symposium for Advances in River Engineering was held on 7th - 8th June 2007 at the Yayoi Auditorium Ichijo Hall in the University of Tokyo. Mr. Inomata, Researcher of Hydrologic Engineering Research Team, attended the symposium and made a poster presentation named "Development of a System for Estimating Flood Risk in the Yoshino River Basin." This was the result of a contract research from the Shikoku Regional Development Bureau, Ministry of Land

Infrastructure and Transport in the fiscal year 2005.

Mr. Inomata was given the poster presentation award for this presentation. With this system, by using radar rainfall data and distributed runoff model (PWRI distributed model), not only the main stream discharge of the Yoshino River but also its tributary discharges can be estimated accurately. The system also incorporates a feedback method and a user friendly interface.

In January 2005, immediately after the disaster caused by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004, the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Reduction (WCDR) was held at Kobe and adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) to globally promote disaster prevention. Recently, along with this framework, UN/ISDR hosted a conference on disaster risk reduction in cooperation with the government of Sri Lanka, one of the countries severely affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami. In this conference, a number of organizations involved in disaster prevention in Sri Lanka gathered and discussed the direction of disaster prevention enhancement, including the development and utilization of tsunami warning systems.

The conference also served as an opportunity to identify the need for supportive measures within the UN/ISDR framework.

Mr. Terakawa, Deputy Director, participated in the conference and gave a presentation about the outline of "The Comprehensive Tsunami Disaster Prevention Training Course," proposed by ICHARM as a supportive measure using the ISDR framework. ICHARM is planning to start this training course in fiscal year 2008 in cooperation with other organizations, inviting a total of 16 practitioners from India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

Venue: the Bandernaike Memorial International Conference Hall, Colombo

Participants to the conference were from a wide range of governmental and non-governmental organizations related to disaster risk reduction.

To ensure efficiency in water-related risk management, structural and non-structural measures should be well-balanced. However, in developing countries where budget and human resources are limited, the number of experts with advanced knowledge and techniques is limited. Thus, training is urgently needed for practitioners in this field.

For that purpose, ICHARM will start a new Master's program, "Disaster Management Policy Program (Water-related Risk Management Course)," from this October in collaboration with the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS). The course will also be conducted in collaboration with a training course, "Training for Expert on Flood-related Disaster Mitigation," offered by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Both the students of GRIPS and the trainees of JICA will attend the same lectures together.

The ultimate goal of the course is to promote solutions for water-related disasters in developing

countries, and the trainees will be expected to promote projects for flood-related disasters in their countries with the techniques and knowledge they will learn in this training course.
The characteristics of the course are as below:

The curriculum of the course consists of lectures, such as "Disaster management Policy," "Integrated Flood Risk Management," "Hydraulics," "Hazard Mapping & Evacuation Planning," as well as hands-on training sessions. In parallel with them, each trainee and student is required to write a master thesis by next September. The trainees of JICA will be expected also to promote "capacity development" in their organizations/countries. To this end, the JICA trainees are to write project proposals for their required theses.

Town-watching is a process of realizing disaster management contexts from a view point of different stakeholders by observing and comparing the scenario in the field. A four days long town-watching training module was conducted from June 5th, 2007 for the participants of Disaster Management training course, which has been organizing by Japan International Cooperation Agency in Osaka. This intensive course was comprised of a) a lecture on Flood Hazard Mapping by Dr. Osti, Speciality Researcher, b) one day town-watching exercise in Kurihashi, Saitama Japan, c) information compilation and analysis by participants and, d) group discussion and group presentation. Dr. Ogawa, Professor of Fuji-Tokoha University, who is also an expert of Town-watching, guided the exercise.

Kurihashi town was severely flooded during Katheleen typhoon in 1947 and since then, Kurihashi town office and Japanese Government have been extensively working to mitigate the risk of any probable flood events in the area. In addition to the structural measures, flood hazard map and warning systems are well adopted. Flood hazard maps have been distributed to each household in the locality, aiming to raise awareness among people and to facilitate safe and smooth evacuation in the case of emergencies. Participants of

Town-watching exercise visited the town office and received briefings on the issues and current flood preparedness activities. The participants acquired hands-on experience by walking around the designated places in the city. They observed the local situation by their own eye, asked questions to the public concerning their know-how and expectations, observed facilities, accessed critical places including evacuation centres, checked necessary rules and regulation etc.

All together 9 participants from China, Nepal, Maldives, Peru, Saint Vincent & the Gredadines and Tonga took part in the exercise. They were divided into 3 small groups and dispatched to the different locations in the city with facilitators. They discussed their findings in a group while town watching. Information from town-watching was later compiled and the major findings were synthesized, which later presented in a group discussion session. They played proactive role during the whole tenure and were able to put several genuine comments on the existing flood hazard maps and its application. It is hoped that the participants acquired basic knowledge on Flood Hazard Mapping and on overall flood hazard management that can be used to solve problems in their home countries.

Interview to residents living in Kurihashi town

General discussion

The International Seminar on Risk Management for Roads was held by the Risk Management Committee of the World Road Association (PIARC). Mr. Terakawa, Deputy Director, participated in the seminar and delivered the keynote speech in the opening session.

He explained integrated flood risk management for urbanized river basins in Japan with some specific examples. He also outlined various activities in which ICHARM takes the initiative to contribute to the prevention and mitigation of water-related disasters throughout the world. Interestingly, according to the results of the questionnaire survey conducted by the seminar's secretariat, floods

were ranked top as the natural disaster that they most need to address in terms of risk management for reliable road services.

On the way back home, Mr. Terakawa visited the US Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources (IWR) and exchanged opinions and information with Dr. Eugene Stakhiv, one of the ICHARM Advisory Board members, on the possible future research collaboration toward the prevention and mitigation of water-related disasters. ICHARM concluded an MOU for research collaboration with IWR in July 2006.

PIARC seminar was held at the Centro de Formacion de la Cooperation Espanola, Cartagena

Dep. Dir. Terakawa visited Dir. Pietrowski (left) and Dr. Stakhiv (right) at IWR, Washington DC.

The review meeting was held at the UNESCO Jakarta Office to discuss the results and future directions concerning UNESCO trust fund projects. Dr. Takeuchi, Director, participated in the meeting as a committee member with Mr. Terakawa, Deputy Director, as an observer, who introduced the outline of ICHARM and its recent activities at the beginning

of the second day's meeting. The meeting was also a great opportunity to exchange comments and opinions with officials from both the UNESCO Headquarters and the Jakarta Office about the multilateral cooperation through the UNESCO-led network, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

The meeting was held at UNESCO Jakarta Office.

Dir. Gijzen of UNESCO Jakarta Office (left) and Dir. Takeuchi

The meeting of the title was held at IHE immediately prior to the IHE Silver Jubilee Symposium and Ceremony on 13-15 June 2007. Eleven representatives from UNESCO water centers including those still in the final stage of official start and more than 20 related participants such as from UNESCO, WWAP, IWR were gathered.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss and finalize "the draft strategy for UNESCO's water-related institutes and centres" produced by the task force met in Geneva on 1-2 February 2007. This was due to mushrooming of a number of category II centers and a need of collaboration was instructed by Resolution XVII-7 "The development of a strategy for UNESCO's category I and category II water-related institutes and centres" adopted by the 17th session of the IHP Intergovernmental Council in July 2006.

The participants were welcomed by the IHE Rector Richard Meganck and IHP Secretary Andras Szollosi-Nagy opened the meeting. Ms Dalal Alnaggar, Director of the Regional Centre of Training and Water Studies of Arid and Semi-arid Zones (RCTWS) in Cairo, Egypt was elected as the Chair. First, all the eleven centers' directors made a brief introduction of their centers. Then, separating into three working groups, the themes on Cooperate image, Networking and Evaluation/Reviewing processes were discussed.

In the next day, discussion continued in the plenary on the report of the separate WGs which lead to a set of agreements of the directors, which include the follows:

Mr. Terakawa, Deputy Director, participated in the three-day international symposium entitled "Water for a Changing World - Enhancing Local Knowledge and Capacity," hosted by UNESCO-IHE as part of its 50th anniversary this year.

UNESCO-IHE is one of the 12 UNESCO-IHP centers located in different parts of the world and plays a key role in human resource development in water-related fields. The symposium provided a great opportunity for a broad range of professionals

in water-related fields to exchange ideas and opinions regarding human resource development to solve global water issues.

During the 50th anniversary celebration ceremony held on the last day, Prof. Alaerts of IHE summarized the outline of the Symposium, and His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange, Chair of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation, delivered a speech highlighting the importance of international efforts to solve water issues.

The 50th anniversary poster of UNESCO-IHE is shown in the signboard of the IHE headquarters entrance.

IHE 50th anniversary commemorative symposium was held at the auditorium of IHE

Dance performance by professors and students of IHE at the celebration ceremony at the Theatre de Veste in Delft City center was highly applauded by the audience.