The 2014 International Training Workshop on Natural Disaster Reduction 27 October - 31 October, 2014; Taipei, Taiwan The 10th International Training Workshop on Natural Disaster Reduction was convened from October 27 ~ October 31, 2014 at the international conference hall of Taiwan's National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR). The theme of the 2014 International Training Workshop is post-disaster recovery. Year 2014 marks the 15th anniversary of Chi-Chi earthquake (1999), the 10th anniversary of the South Asia tsunami (2004) and the 5th anniversary of Typhoon Morakot (2009). In order to learn recovery experience from past large scale disasters, and pass down the experience in disaster management, the program aimed to share Taiwan s post-disaster recovery experiences to our international participants as well as to learn from their experiences in post-disaster recovery to strengthen disaster management strategy in Taiwan.
Keynote speeches were given by Dr. Chen, Jenn-Chuan, Minister without Portfolio, Executive Yuan of Taiwan to talk about Taiwan Post-Disaster Recovery Experience of Typhoon Morakot as well as executive directors from the Kyoto University Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC) in Japan, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) in Thailand, and Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) in Hawaii to talk about their International Post-Disaster Recovery Experiences. People and Environment are essentials to post-disaster recovery. The 5-day training course has not only covered residential reconstruction but also cultural preservation, industrial development and psychological rehabilitation. The course was also designed to review and discuss different post-disaster recovery phases including consensus building, plans developing, projects implementation and evaluation.
An MOU renewal signing ceremony between PDC and NCDR was also scheduled in the workshop, it was to renew the commitment for a second five-year-term and to advance disaster risk reduction (DRR) objectives, including data sharing to support risk assessment and early warning in the region. The two organizations will look forward to exploring challenges in disaster management and disaster risk reduction and to leveraging advances in open data/big data to speed response and recovery efforts. Also in order to identify how civil groups assisted in recovery, NGOs in Taiwan such as World Vision and Tzu Chi and NGOs in Malaysia such as Mercy Malaysia and Crisis Relief Squad of Malaysia Chinese Association were invited to share their stories and achievements of post-disaster recovery. The field trip for this workshop was to visit the 921 Earthquake Museum and Shenmu Community, which would provide best practices to simulate brain-storming on issues related to post-disaster recovery and help participants to observe recovery stories of the disasters.
The workshop invited experts and professionals from local and foreign disaster management agencies and research institutes to exchange and share best practices and experiences. There are 27 international delegates from 8 countries from South and Southeast Asia, Central and South America including Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Republic of Nicaragua and Vietnam. NCDR expected that through the workshop, participants capacity of identifying problems as well as solving problems would be enhanced through intensive discussion, case study, field visit and experience sharing.
Contact Information National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction 9F, No. 200, Sec. 3, Beisin Rd., Sindian City, New Taipei City, Taiwan Tel: +886 2 8195 8600 Fax: +886 2 8912 7766 Website: www.ncdr.nat.gov.tw