Activity Report

ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee 12th Integrated Workshop, 30 October 3rd November, Jeju, Republic of Korea

30 Oct. - 3 Nov. 2017 (Jeju, Rep. of Korea)

The ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee 12th Integrated Workshop "Tropical cyclone related forecast, warning and DRR in the era of big data and social media: challenges and opportunities"was held from 30 October to 3rd November, in Jeju, Republic of Korea. From Japan, JMA, MLIT, ICHARM and ADRC attended the meeting. The workshop was opened by Director General,Korea Meteorological Administration, Dr.CHO hyoseob, Han River Flood Control Office, Republic of Korea, Mr.Yu Jixin-Typhoon Committee Secretary,Typhoon Committee Secretariat, Mr.Taoyong Peng,Chief of TCP Programme,World Meteorological Organization and Representative of ESCAP. Dr. NAM Jaecheol, Administrator of Korea meteorological Administration made an opening address by video.

In the following plenary session,a seriese of keynote lectures were given on the main theme of "Tropical cyclone related forecast including one by Dr.Muroi, JMA on "Tropical cyclone forecast improvements at JMA-challenges and opportunities with the Bog data".

On day 2, three parallel sessions took place and participants attended individual working groups: JMA for working group for metheorology, MLIT for working group for hydrology and ADRC for working group for DRR.

The WGDRR Parallel Meeting started with attended by 20 participants from nine members including China, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Lao PDR, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Thailand, USA and Vietnam, and the representatives from TCS and WMO. First, participants presented their report on the activities on DRR in 2017 and typhoons.

ADRC first summarized four typhoons that landed Japan in 2017 by October including no.3, no.5, no.18 and no.21, and reported about recent use of GLIDE by stressing the effectiveness of GLIDE for sharing information on disasters affecting many countries beyond borders, in particular, those on typhoons. ADRC also informed about some cases of infrastructure BBB studied in the APEC project by highlighting the BBB cases, in which relevant authorities in the affected region successfully overcame the effects of typhoon at the stage of infrastructure recovery works. Finally, ADRC shared its member countries' DRR priorities of climate change and climate induced disasters, and stressed the importance of learning the past experiences such as the great Hanshin Awaji flood in 1938.

(2017/11/10　12:30)　

ADRC Participated in the 7th Annual UN-SPIDER Conference and Visited Relevant Organizations

24-26 October 2017 (Beijing, China)

The 7th Annual UN-SPIDER Conference, jointly organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's Republic of China, was held in Beijing on 23-25 October 2017. The event gathered almost 100 participants, including representatives of Space Agencies and Disaster Management Organizations from 34 countries and eight regions, who visited relevant organizations as a part of the three-days' program. ADRC representative attended the meeting from Day 2 afternoon, since the originally planned flight to Beijing on 22th canceled due to Typhoon.

<Afternoon, 24th October >
The theme of session 3 from afternoon on Day 2 was "Technology integrated for disaster risk assessment and emergency response". Each participant reported their activities including Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Beijing Normal University, "Continuum Planning and Development Trust, India" a Non-Profit Organization, and Ministry of Home Affairs, India. Amongst all, in the report of FAO, they proposed indicators influencing decision making for food aid by focusing on assessment of situation within seventy-two (72) hours after disaster occurrence, by learning from the cases of "Cyclone Pam" (Vanuatu, March 6, 2015) and "The Great Southern Asia Flood" (Bangladesh, August-September / Sri-Lank May / Nepal, August, 2017).

ADRC joined the session entitled "Integrated emergency response tools/systems" among the parallel session after break. In this session, World Vision International, Department of Civil Protection, Zimbabwe, and National Institute of Aeronautics and Space, Indonesia (Lembaga Penerbangan dan Antariksa Nasional - LAPAN) provided their reports. LAPAN reported about landslides that hit Banjarnegara, Central Java every year and expressed their appreciation for the contribution of Sentinel Asia in the presentation.
<25th October>
On the final day of the conference, plenary session 4 and 5 took place in the morning and site visits in the afternoon.
The session 4 discussed "Integrated applications of earth observation, global navigation satellite system and telecommunication constellations for disaster risk reduction and climate change related extreme hazards" and Newcastle University (England), Beijing University (China), and Delta University (USA) provided their reports.

The report of Newcastle University was about the analysis of landslide by Interferometric SAR in Xinmo village, Mao counter, Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China, while Beijing University reported about the analysis of the affected areas by the Kumamoto Earthquakes by using Polarimetric SAR in (ALOS PALSAR PolSAR, April 21, 2016). Both reports emphasized the expectation for further use of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite for emergency response, enabling assessment of affected situation easier.

The Session 5 explored "Networking and engagement with the UN-SPIDER network". Mr. Ueda, researcher, ADRC reported as the final presenter in this session that ADRC has been playing the role of Regional Support Office (RSO) of UN-SPIDER through the initiative of Sentinel Asia and the escalation to international charter. ADRC stressed also that voluntary activities facilitating disaster risk reduction need to be further promoted by referring to the recent participation in Sentinel Asia by Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), and the satellite images provision of the Jiuzhaigou Earthquake in August through Sentinel Asia.
In the afternoon, participants were divided into two groups, one visited the National Disaster Reduction Center of China, and another, China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) Exhibition Center. ADRC representative joined the former.

<26th October>
ADRC visited the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (CEA) to make an interview about Emergency Observation Request (EOR) for Jiuzhaigou Earthquake in August this year.

The primary purpose of this EOR was to predict secondary damages in order to support the relief activities after the earthquake. According to the CEA, the Sichuan mountain area including Jiuzhaigou is frequently hit by earthquakes in China, and observation by using satellite is thus indispensable. Data observed by SAR satellite has been widely used since optical satellite could not be used on cloudy days, which is frequent in the region

Besides, ADRC requested them not only to make observation requests but also to analyze satellite imagery in the future since CEA is registered as Data Analysis Node (DAN).

(2017/10/24 19:30)

Participation in the 2017 Joint Workshop on Networking for Environmental Sustainability Cooperation in East Asia entitled "Reflection and improvement on transnational networking for Environmental sustainability cooperation in East Asia"

12 October 2017 (Seoul, Republic of Korea)

This meeting, hosted by SEJONG Institute (Republic of Korea) and Institute of Developing Economies (Japan), aims at continuing the discussion about possibility of building a community or networks on cooperation on the environmental issues, one of the themes dealt at the Hiroshima International Conference (as Track 1.5) entitled "Northeast Asia Peace Cooperation Initiative" held on September 13, last year.

Accordingly, the final goal is to build the networks of individual fields of non-traditional security including cyberspace, environment, nuclear safety and disaster risk reduction, which will contribute to build a traditional security in north-eastern Asian region by taking into consideration of North Korea, and search for feasibility of peaceful cooperation in north-eastern Asian region, by highlighting three policy priorities: (1) traditional and non-traditional security, (2) economic cooperation with North Korea, Russia and Mongolia, and (3) economic cooperation with the southern Asia and ASEAN. Especially, the international cooperation on the environmental field has very long history and a considerable outcome of studies by the academic circles in North Eastern Asian Region and the important agreements in the Trilateral Environmental Ministerial Meeting (TEMM) have been achieved. Nevertheless, a consensus has not yet been well built on the effective policy agenda.
Based on those situations, this meeting was held as the "Track 2 conference" in order to explore future prospects about networking in the field of environment by learning also from efforts made in the fields of nuclear safety, disaster risk reduction and others.

The first session in morning, titled "Experiences and prospects of multi-lateral networking on non-traditional security issues in East Asia" discussed these current situation and future based on three key note speeches.

In the Presentation regarding the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue by Mr. DORJSUREN Nanjin, Senior Researcher, Institute for Strategic Studies of Mongolia, National Security Council, that dialogue was a Track 1.5 meeting attended by also Russia and North Korea and drawn attention as an opportunity of positive opinion exchange for formulating their consensus. And based on that discussion, Dr. Lee, Vice President, the Sejong Institute said "We hope that this meeting also formulates an architecture of multi-lateral cooperation within four - five years" and this session was concluded by his remark.

The second session in afternoon was titled "Sharing Experiences of Regional Cooperation on Environment Issues" and 12 experiences were reported. The speeches besides environmental issues in this meeting include; "Assessment on environment and health by the One Belt and One Road initiative promoted by China by Ms. Hyoung-Mi KIM, Senior Expert, China Office of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) , American NGO; "Experiences of regional cooperation in Nuclear Safety" presented by Dr. Young-Geun KIM, Director of Social Disaster and Security Research Center, Korea University; "Challenges for transnational networking on nuclear safety in Asia" presented by Mr. Hiedyuki BAN, No Nukes Asia Forum Japan which is Japanese NGO; and "The role of ADRC in trilateral cooperation on disaster prevention and reduction: focusing on the nexus of environment and disaster" presented by Mr.Ueda, researcher , ADRC.

(2017/10/12 19:30)

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