International Flood Initiative (IFI)-Recent Developments

29 May 2009: The workshop on “Charting Global Agenda for Meeting Today’s Flood Management Challenges” was organized by the International Flood Initiative (IFI) to catalyze global agenda toward Integrated Flood Management. The main conveners of the event were UNESCO, WMO, UNU, UN/ISDR, and ICHARM as the IFI Secretariat. Other IFI partners such as IAHS, IAHR and ICLR also took part in the workshop. The workshop emphasized two very important commitments for IFI in the “Water and Disaster” report drafted by the high-level expert panel on water and disaster of UNSGAB as follows:

1- National government to promptly develop people-centered warning systems, comprehensive flood risk maps and assessments linked to communication systems such as cell phone networks. These systems to include observation and warning for flash floods. The panel requests WMO and UNESCO (via International Flood Initiative) to assist governments in undertaking the proposed actions and invite international financial institutions to support the fulfillment of the proposed actions. (Item No. 2 in annex 1, list of actions)

2- International Flood Initiative and international hydrological and hydraulic institutes to examine the efficiency and effectiveness of disaster prevention measures and develop disaster preparedness indices for implementation by local authorities. (Item No. 30 in annex 1, list of actions)

Before closing the workshop, dates for the 5th International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM5) were discussed and decided to be 27-30 September 2011. The next meeting of the IFI AC/MC will be held in Geneva on the occasion of the 2nd Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction to be held on 16-19 June 2009.

12 March 2009: The first issue of the IFI Newsletter has been published (PDF, 735KB). In this issue you will read about IFI news and coming events as well as two interviews with IFI partners.

23 February 2009: PIANC announced about the formation of an international working group to study resilience
issues for navigation structures that act as flood defense barriers (PDF, 82KB). The requirement for resilience is to ensure the system does not fail catastrophically if the flood is higher then the design flood. This group will compile guidance to form something akin to a model building code for flood defense structures. Although this group will be formed around navigation structures the findings will be applicable for all defense structures. Depending on country of origin interested parties should apply through their national PIANC section, if there is any questions about how to apply IFI will put you
in touch with the appropriate contact.

27 November 2008: The website of the 4th ISFD (Toronto, 5~8 May , 2008) has been migrated to this website. Please follow the link to ICFM in the left menu and there you will have options to choose between 4th and 5th conference.

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.

May and June, 2008: IFI partners submit their IFI -related activities to the secretariat using the same format (MS-Word, 28KB). To see the list of the activities by entering you user ID and password.

May 5, 2008: The second IFI Management Committee (IFI-MC) meeting was held at the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), in Toronto on Monday, the 5th May 2008. At the outset, the participants selected Mr. Salvano Briceno, Director of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR), as the Chair. Click here to see the list of the participants and meeting Agenda.

It was decided that the next meeting of the IFI-AC will be held in conjunction with ICHARM’s international advisory board meeting in Tsukuba, Japan on October 2nd.

May 8, 2008: The IFI session with the title of "Strategy for mainstraeming flood risk reduction in society" was held successfully in the 4th International Symposium of Flood Defence, Toronto, Canada on May 8, 2008. The panelists: Avinash Tyagi (WMO, Director of Division of Hydrology and Water Resources), Yuichi Ono on behalf of Sálvano Briceño (ISDR Executive Director), Andreas Schumann (UNESCO), Erich Plate (UNU), Kuniyoshi Takeuchi (Director of ICHARM).