Integrated Flood Risk Management: Basic Concepts and the Japanese Experience

Global climate change has generated new rainfall extremes, with unprecedented floods, landslides and debris flows. This text presents recent conceptual developments in disasters, risk, and resilience; surveys UN policies; and gives an integrated approach; with the Japanese experience of effective flood management and disaster recovery.

Kuniyoshi Takeuchi is Professor Emeritus of University of Yamanashi, Kofu, Japan where he taught hydrology and water resources for 30 years till 2007. He served as the founding director (2006-2014) and later an advisor (2014-2017) of International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM) under the auspices of UNESCO, Tsukuba, Japan. He got his BS (1966), MS (1968) and later Dr.Eng. (1982) in civil engineering at University of Tokyo, and Ph.D. (1972) in city and regional planning at University of North Carolina. He has been specialized in surface hydrology, water resource systems and disaster management. His current interest includes, inter alia, transdisciplinary approach for scientific decision making for building societal resilience to disasters. He served for various professional offices including the chairperson of Inter-Governmental Council of UNESCO IHP for 1998-2000, the president of IAHS for 2001-2005, the chair of IUGG Commission on Geophysical Risk and Sustainability for 2007-2015, a vice chair of Science Committee of ICSU-ISSC-UNISDR Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) for 2009-2015. He is a recipient of several professional awards including IAHS-UNESCO-WMO International Hydrology Prize (2012).