During the recent Board meeting of the IRDR International Centre of Excellence Taipei, it was reported that one of the results of a Visiting Scientists programme funded by the supporting local Academy of Sciences will be a new programme on systems approaches to flood risk management.

The project development goes back to the visit of Prof Slobodan Simonovic of the University of Western Ontario to the ICoE, which is based at the Centre of Sustainability Studies in Taipei in spring 2014.

Simonovic is a Professor of University of Western Ontario in Canada.  He lectured on  “System Approach to Management Disasters”, “Decision Support Tools for Water and Environment Systems”, “Managing Natural Disasters in Changing Climate” and reported that the rising cost of natural disasters and the financial burden on Canada is the country’s biggest public safety risk. During his stay, he also visited the Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research at the National Central University and built close contacts with the local scientific community. Simonovic specializes in water resources and systems modelling. His research and teaching resources can be found here.

IcoE Taipei focuses on integrated research on disaster risk from both the natural and social science perspectives and serves as a partnership network of disaster reduction research within Taiwan as well as the international scientific community.

The IRDR International Centre of Excellence has been offering for several years a visiting scientists programme which hosts short- and long-term visiting scientists from  both the natural and social sciences.