ICHARM organized a webinar:
“ICHARM’s efforts for addressing flood disasters
considering the prevention of COVID-19 infection”

Amid the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 infection all over the world, the flood season is approaching just like any other year in many parts of the countries around the world, during which tremendous flood damage may result. Because of that, it is critically important to plan preventive measures now for flood disasters risk reduction. Under such circumstances, ICHARM has started an effort to address flood disaster risk reduction considering the prevention of COVID-19 infection, hoping to support the international and regional communities, especially in Asia and the Pacific, where flood disasters may give serious impact on their sustainable development.

As a part of it, ICHARM has currently been elaborating guidelines for early warning and evacuation in consideration of preventing the infection of COVID-19. ICHARM is also developing an information sharing system for municipalities by utilizing existing information systems for disaster risk reduction: IDRIS, BOSS and DIAS. To disseminate such efforts in the IFI implementing countries and others, ICHARM organized a webinar titled “ICHARM’s efforts for addressing flood disasters considering the prevention of COVID-19 infection” on July 3, 2020. This webinar consisted of the following presentations by ICHARM on guidelines and tools which have recently been developed for flood disaster risk reduction:

• Objectives and concept (by Executive Director KOIKE Toshio)
• Collection of critical situations for local governments during flood emergency response (by Senior Researcher OHARA Miho)
• Overview and improvement of IDRIS considering critical situations (by Senior Researcher DENDA Masatoshi)

The webinar attracted more than 60 people from the IFI implementing countries (the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar) and others. As is the case in Japan, water-related disaster management in considering the prevention of COVID-19 infection is an urgent challenge for those countries; thus, all the participants showed a great interest in this theme. For this reason, some participants eagerly requested that the tools and methods presented at the webinar be translated into English for dissemination and utilization in each country.

ICHARM is planning to publish an English version of them as soon as possible to disseminate them for utilization in countries around the world.