香港六合彩

Event

Developing and disseminating disaster resilience tools are among the top goals of the UNESCO CHAIR in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering. Dr. Ahsana Parammal Vatteri, UNESCO Chair Research Fellow, joined Dr. Ji-Eun Byun of the University of Glasgow, Prof Chian Siau Chen of the National University of Singapore and Engr. Dexter Lo of Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan, to deliver a week-long in-person training, lectures, and stakeholder engagement forum at Xavier University - Ateneo de Cagayan, Philippines.听

The program was organized as part of the Lloyd鈥檚 Register Foundation (LRF) Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk (IPUR) seed grant project 鈥淒ecision Support Tool for Infrastructure Resilience鈥�, developing an affordable and accessible decision-support tool to empower local communities in developing countries. The project focuses on the resilience of school road networks from earthquake and flood hazards. A Bayesian network-based tool was developed as part of the project with application to Cagayan de Oro, which was disseminated through this program. This comprehensive program was organised and facilitated by Engr. Dexter Lo, Xu Vice President Social Engagement and the team from the XU Engineering Resource Centre.

The program kicked off with a lecture series on 02 Sep 2024, with lectures to the undergraduate civil engineering students of XU. Prof Chen, Dr. Byun and Dr. Parammal Vatteri presented on geotechnical risk analysis, infrastructure system resilience, and quantitative risk analysis, respectively. The sessions engaged well with the enthusiastic batch of XU students, with interesting Q&A sessions. 听
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Technical training on the 鈥榙ecision support tool for infrastructure resilience鈥� for engineers, planners, and resilience practitioners was held from 03 to 05 Sep 2024. Twenty-two representatives from several governmental offices in the region, including the Office of Civil Defence, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Education, Department of Public Works and Highways, City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Department, City Housing and Urban Development Department, and Office of the Building Official participated in the three-day training which involved expert sessions and field trips.听

The sessions elaborated on quantitative asset risk assessment from seismic and flood hazards, geotechnical risk assessment from landslides, and hands-on training on the reliability tool developed on the Python platform. The field trip on 04 Sep took the participants through the process of school building typology assessment using the World Bank鈥檚 听and flood vulnerability assessment using the PARNASSUS approach.听

On 05 Sep, the participants travelled to a slope site to study and measure the characteristics of the slope to investigate the risk to landslides. Along the way, they also took the opportunity to assess a bridge typology. An open discussion on effective risk communication and its challenges was organized on the same day, gathering the experience of DRR practitioners and brainstorming solutions for the current challenges, such as the format of communication, the difference in communication style to different audiences, government-citizen responsibility in bearing the losses from disasters, etc.听

On 06 Sep, trainees as well as higher officials from their offices participated in an open forum to discuss the delivered training and its applicability in light of the current challenges and needs of the community. Topics of discussion included:听

• translating the risk information to locally familiar terminology and practice
• institutional capacity building, especially for engineering assessment pre and post-disaster
• documentation of as built drawings of schools
• better management of resources for building and infrastructure assessment, hence exploring efficient means of surveying and relative training.听

The project partners now aim to extend the work done through this seed grant, addressing the needs of the practitioners and administrators, and supporting the challenges identified.听

Pictures

Below are some pictures of the event: