International Flood Initiative (IFI)-News and Events

In this section you will see the latest news on flood and related topics from different sources.

16 October 2008: The third meeting of the Advisory Committee (AC) and Management Committee (MC) of the International Flood Initiative (IFI) was held at ICHARM on 2 October 2008. The main agenda of this joint meeting was to propose the IFI Action Plan. Following the review of the IFI mapping activities exercise, the discussion on the IFI Action Plan went to emphasize the role of the initiative in synthesizing what we already know on flood issues and translating available research and studies to an understandable format for flood policy makers. In order to formulate sensible IFI outcomes, three types of IFI products were proposed:

- IFI briefs: About 2 pages (at most 4 pages); a brochure-type multilingual publication to communicate flood issues and available solutions to governments and policy makers. They can be in a printed format or web-based.

- IFI reference series: A kind of guidebooks and manuals to fulfill gaps and elaborate in detail on flood issues and solutions for practical use with respect to ongoing activities at WMO and various other available texts.

- IFI web tutorials: web-based education and training with respect to the available e-courses at UNU and UNESCO-IHE.

In order to promote the exposure of IFI activities, it was agreed that the IFI Secretariat at ICHARM should publish IFI newsletters and periodical reports. They can be distributed using the UNESCO-IHP network as well as WMO-CHy and other relevant networks. The next meeting of the IFI AC/MC will be held at Geneva-WMO Headquarters on the occasion of the 2^nd Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction (16-18 June 2009).

13 August 2008: The International Flood Initiative mapping activities report has been published. The IFI mapping activities are prepared based on the reports submitted by the IFI partners. In total 51 flood related activities are submitted to the IFI Secretariat by UNESCO, WMO, UN/ISDR, UNU, IAHS, IAHR, ICLR and ICHARM. The following are some results of the IFI mapping activities exercise:

- Research activities (39 activities) is a dominant type of activity, compared with education, information networking and technical assistance.

- Flood risk management (44 activities) is the major topic compared with the flood vulnerability, governance & participation and early warning & emergency management.

- Two-thirds of the flood activities scope is regional and international scale.

- There is 7 activities from 4 different organizations aligned on extreme events and large floods.

- A table of 11 activities are listed there as future opportunities to consider in the IFI Action Plan.

The original reports is available upon request. Please send us your request for the original report of Mapping Activities to the IFI Secretariat at ICHARM.

31 July 2008: Science Council of Japan compiled a proposal entitled "Adaptation to Water-related Disasters Induced by Global Environmental Change" (PDF, 530KB).

29 July 2008: The 5th International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM5) will be held in Tsukuba, Japan in 2011. The ICFM5 will be hosted by the International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM under the auspices of UNESCO) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of Japan.

27 November 2008: The 4th IFI-AC/MC meeting will be held at WMO headquarter in Geneva on in June 2009. For more information on coming events click here.

Recent Developments: The 3rd IFI-MC meeting was held at ICHARM-Tsukuba on October 2nd 2008. The IFI partners mapping activity is finished. For more information click here.

Newsletter: The first issue of IFI Newsletter will be published by the end of January 2009. It is a biannual Newsletter published and distributed by IFI Secretariat at ICHARM to bring to you latest news on Flood and IFI activities. For the subscription please send a blank body email to with "Newsletter Subscribe" to