by Tomoyuki Okada – World Meteorological Organization & Minoru Arai – Japan Water Agency
On the request of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Japan Water Agency (JWA) decided to cooperate as Support Base Partner with the Integrated Flood Management (IFM) HelpDesk that is managed by WMO
Established in June 2009, by Technical Support Unit in the Hydrology and Water Resources Branch of WMO, the IFM HelpDesk is supported by a number of cooperative organizations (Support Base Partners). The Support Base Partners provide voluntary services to provide technical advice and guidance in the development of integrated flood management policy, strategy and institutional reform. These services are demand-driven and are channeled through the HelpDesk facility. So far, thirty water related organizations with specific IFM-relevant expertise including JWA are registered as Support Base Partners (See Table1).
Table1 List of Support Base Partners
Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre |
AGRHYMET |
Australian Bureau of Meteorology |
Cap-Net / UNDP |
Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas |
Czech Hydrometeorological Institute |
Deltares |
DHI Group |
EUROAQUAE |
Hamburg University of Technology |
International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research |
Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure Transport and Tourism |
International Association of Hydrological Sciences |
Japan Institute of Construction Engineering |
Japan Water Agency |
Korea Water Forum |
Korea Water Resources Association |
Nile Basin Capacity Building Network for River Engineering |
Ramsar |
Regional Centre on Urban Water management |
The International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management |
Stockholm International Water Institute |
Swiss Federal Office for the Environment |
UN / ISDR |
UNESCO-IHE |
University of Dundee |
University of Idaho |
UNOSAT |
US Army Corps of Engineers |
UNECE Water Convention |
The specific areas of support of Support Base Partners are summarized below:
Development and provision of flood management tools and e-learning options for capacity building; and
Formulation of high-level objectives/scoping for flood management proposals with countries and river basins requesting HelpDesk Services.
NARBO promotes to exchange information with such organization. If your organization is interested in this service, you are encouraged to contact the Helpdesk for further information.
You can access the IFM HelpDesk from the link below.
http://www.apfm.info/helpdesk.htm
As supportive activity through the IFM HelpDesk, the Training of Trainers (ToT) Workshop on Integrated Flood management (IFM) for the Nile Basin Countries was held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 23 to 27 November 2009. The training course was organized jointly by WMO/APFM (Associated Programme on Flood Management) and international/local collaborating institutions.
Total 29 experts from all 10 Nile Basin countries attended the ToT Workshop. Experts included water resources managers, land-use planners, policy makers, engineers and university lecturers. Through the five-day ToT workshop the concept and social, environmental, economic, legal and institutional aspects of IFM were presented by the experts from APFM and collaborating institutions. Facilitators and participants discussed how IFM approach could be adopted in the flood management plans of the different countries.
As a result of the workshop, it is expected that the trained experts are in a position to further promote the concept of IFM and provide training on institutional or national levels. Following the Nairobi workshop, another national training workshop was organized by one of the participants in Ethiopia in June 2010.
For more information on the Nairobi workshop
http://www.apfm.info/nairobi_workshop.htm
Group Discussion