Torrential Downpours Research Articles

Enhancement of disaster preparedness with social capital and community capacity: A perspective from a comparative case study of rural communities in Kochi, Japan

Social capital is defined as the factors promoting useful cooperative actions, such as social organizations and systems, norms, networks, people’s sense of values, consciousness and beliefs, held by members of the community and/or concerned external parties. It is argued that social capital can play an important role in the enhancement of communities’ disaster preparedness. Recently the importance of disaster preparedness has been widely recognized, and community based approaches have drawn significant attention. This paper attempts to clarify the key factors that local governments should take into account to in order to enhance a community’s capacity for disaster preparedness, through field observations and surveys in rural communities in Japan. Surveys were carried out in two communities of Tosashimizu city of Kochi Prefecture, which was highly affected by a torrential downpour in 2001. After the experience of the 2001 disaster, different actions were taken in the two communities during the catastrophic disaster of Typhoon 23 in 2004. Through key informant interviews and qualitative comparison of the two communities, it can be concluded that aspects of social capital such as 1) community leader’s leadership; 2) community’s bonds and networks; and 3) institutions and systems within the community should be considered to enhance a community’s disaster preparedness.

ANALYSIS OF STREAM CHANNEL GEOMETRY AND PHYSIOGRAPHIC FORMATIVE PROCESS IN VALLEY FLATS

Disasters causedby torrential downpours have recently been increasing throughout ournation. Inparticular, there have been many cases of flood damage on small and medium-sized rivers with relatively small design flood discharge in valley flats. Specific instances of this type damage include that which occurred in Tochigi Prefecture's Yosasa River in 1998, the Appetsu River in Hokkaido in 2003. These disasters are characterized by the flow of flood waters that were not confined to the river channel and caused damage to many houses, roads and bridges. In this study, we examined a method for adopting double Fourier analysis, which is used for shape analysis of the results of experiments on sediment hydraulics, to assess the flow channel geometry of an actual valley flat. The originof the terrain of the valley flat was estimated based on the results of sediment hydraulic studies, including experiments on compound meandering channel anddouble-row bar. The potential for utilizing the estimate results to predict the flow of flood waters and measures to reduce the impact of disasters at times of large-scale flooding in a valley flat was then indicated.

The flooding of Hat Yai: predictors of adverse emotional responses to a natural disaster

AbstractBackground: A severe flood occurred in Hat Yai following a torrential downpour of rain in November 2000, killing at least 32 people, injuring about 1700, and causing severe damage to property. We have assessed the effect of this disaster on the mental health of the community and investigated predictors of adverse emotional responses.Method: A cross‐sectional survey using a structured questionnaire was carried out and Thai versions of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and Impact of Event Scale (IES) were administered. Data on 590 respondents residing in four areas of the city and its environs were obtained.Results: Two hundred and thirty‐three (40 per cent) respondents had a positive GHQ score suggesting a mental health problem. There were significant associations between a positive GHQ and the subjects' perception of the severity of loss, the ability to collect possessions, and showing a ‘negative’ response to the flood. High IES scores were associated with indices of the severity of loss, lower socio‐economic status and minority religion.Conclusions: Natural disasters, such as floods, have a major impact on the mental health of a community. The impact is related to the perception of severity and loss, and is greater in lower socio‐economic and minority religious sub‐groups. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

HIV/AIDS — The Urgency of the task Ahead from the Perspective of Trinidad and Tobago

Permit me to begin by thanking the joint sponsors of this Conference, The University of the West Indies, the Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutes (UNICA), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for affording me the opportunity to address this forum. I must tell you that I accepted the invitation most graciously, enthused straight away as I was by the very theme of the Conference: HIV/AIDS: The Power of Education. Additionally, the proposed launch this evening of a related and critically important publication entitled Education and HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, which was co-sponsored by the International Institute for Economic Planning and UNESCO and co-authored by two outstanding scholars in the field, Professors Michael Kelly and Brendan Bain, further aroused my curiosity and rendered the present engagement the more alluring. To my mind, in a manner of speaking if ever there was a Conference of importance, this one is. HIV/AIDS is the most deleterious and formidable bio-social challenge facing the Caribbean and wider world at this time. For years it hung over our region like a dark, polluted and ominous cloud which, like the rest of the world, we allowed to overshadow us, through neglect and underestimation. With the threatened escalation of the HIV/AIDS virus all over the world by the second decade of this century, the cloud has now burst into a torrential downpour and the only way out of the deadly acid rain is to seek protection and escape. THe only way is through education. If ever there was a worthy agenda, this Conference which seeks to discuss the manner which through education HIV/AIDS can be better understood, and how education in the Caribbean can be made more relevant and appropriate to the challenge set us by this destructive and deadly pandemic, then this Conference is it. In a similar way, If ever there was a text worthy of the effort of it authors, the present publication by Professors Bain and Kelly, designed as it is to equip all in the Caribbean with information and understanding of what HIV/AIDS means and the diverse ways in which education can contribute to managing the disease, this is the text. I wish upfront to commend the organizers of this Conference and also to commend the two Professors on a book that is not only sorely needed but, from what I am already beginning to perceive, has been well researched and well written. Ladies and Gentlemen, the present Conference effort is all the more to be appreciated, given that less than a month ago, I addressed the Caribbean/United States Chiefs of Mission Conference on HIV/AIDS. At that conference, the United Nations Development programmeme in its report on Human Development had complained that all the world over, countries and institutions had not been doing enough to combat the spread of the deadly HIV/AIDS virus. The reasons that have been advanced to explain the tardy attitude of states and institutions are multifarious and complex. However, more and more we are being told of the lack of leadership and vision at the global, regional and national levels, and of the silence and denial by individuals and their families, and about the harmful attitudes and behaviours that negate and discriminate against those whose misfortune it was to find themselves infected by the dreaded disease. We are being told also of the failure of the international community and of national governments to commit financial and other resources towards the fight against HIV/AIDS, and of the inability of states and institutions to design and deliver adequate and appropriate response programmes and measures. We hear of too much focus on quick-fix solutions, stop-gap measures, and the lack of comprehensive policies to deal with HIV/AIDS, and of the focus on the problems of individuals rather than on the implications of HIV/AIDS for social degeneracy, nemesis and vaporization. …

See you there

A few years ago I was lucky enough to spend a few days on the Big Island of Hawaii. Fortunately, it was part of a holiday rather than a work-related visit, so when I decided to spend a lot of the time on trails in Volcanoes National Park, I had none of the residual guilt usually associated with skipping sessions at a meeting I was supposed to be attending. Actually that whole issue of “meetings psychology” is an interesting one. There are probably entire academic departments devoted to it somewhere. They probably hold annual meetings in nice places where timetabled sessions oscillate between two stable states: auditoriums filled to bursting with academics who are noticeably more paranoid than usual, convinced that everyone is watching them. And auditoriums which are completely empty. You can imagine the conversations in the white-water-rafting ticket queue: “Hello Fred, good to see you. Having a day off?” “No, no, not at all. Following our recent major grant; you know about that?—‘The effects of intermittent relaxation on factual retention and creativity in loosely hierarchical organisational structures’—I’m actually obliged to spend at least 2 days per meeting engaging in fieldwork—as now in fact. Anyway, I was going to speak to you at the session yesterday, but you weren’t there were you?” “Yes, yes, I was there. Actually I was sitting right behind you.” “Oh right. So what’s new?” “Well we’ve got a big new grant too. I’m really pleased about it because I didn’t think it would get through—‘The effects of observation on factual retention, creativity, and relaxational behaviour in principal investigators’.” “Oh right…right…” In my purely anecdotal experience, people vary enormously both in their susceptibility to extraneous temptations and in their tendency to feeling guilty about having succumbed. At one extreme, there are those who feel so guilty about sneaking out that they will sit through days or even entire weeks of meetings with gritted teeth, trying desperately to extract satisfaction from their puritanical sense of goodness, but generally giving the game away by a default state of grumpiness, lightened only by occasional bursts of good humour when news filters through that a torrential downpour has caused a white-water raft to overturn and, as night falls, its occupants are stranded at assorted locations several miles downstream. (Actually, this isn’t quite the extreme: the real extremes are those who sit through an entire week of a meeting and genuinely enjoy it. But these individuals are quite rare, and anyway, are probably beyond psychology). At the other extreme, are the people who you didn’t even know were at the meeting—basically because they weren’t. Of course, most of us fall somewhere in between and our behaviour on any given occasion is quite sensitive to factors such as meeting content, company, and location. In places like Belgrade, everyone’s at the meeting, usually huddled round the podium for safety in numbers and to avoid eye contact with the armed guard stationed at the exit to prevent them leaving. But in places like Hawaii, even small lecture theatres suddenly become airy expanses, sparsely populated by an elite audience. And that squeaking noise isn’t the projector malfunctioning, it’s the sound of teeth grinding.

A performance evaluation method of monitoring systems for inner-basin drainage under imperfect observation

Major issues of urban drainage are coping with flooding caused by torrential downpours and water pollution caused by washing loads from non-point sources. Large-scale trunk sewers and pumping stations are constructed in large Japanese cities. To reduce both types of damage due to floods and water pollution, these sewerage systems should have additional functions of storage and treatment of the washing loads. In such a case, pump operations have a key role for the reduction of damage. However, perfect observation of the state of the system is difficult since continuous observation of water levels and/or water flow in all the points of the sewers is necessary. Hence, we cannot use operation optimization techniques which require perfect observation of the system. In a certain condition, several stochastic optimization techniques only require partial state observations: systems equations and observation equations are both linear, the objective function is quadratic and the time-horizon of the problem is finite. Although there may be cases where these assumptions hold, it is hard to obtain an optimal operation policy of pumping stations in urban inner-drainage systems using these optimization techniques, since observation equations, at least, are non-linear in most situations. This paper focuses on this partial observability of states for pump operation problems in sewerage systems. A practical method to design pump operation optimization and an evaluation method of the performance on the reduction of damage by implementing another monitoring station to the system are introduced. A numerical example is also presented to illustrate how the proposed method works.

Landslide and the blight of pine forest : The case study of localized torrential downpour at west Hiroshima district in June

Landslide and the blight of pine forest : The case study of localized torrential downpour at west Hiroshima district in June

The physics of El Niño

The Past two years have witnessed the strongest El Niño this century. Indeed, the event received so much media coverage that the phrase “El Niño” is now part of our everyday vocabulary. The impact of the 1997/8 El Niño was felt in many parts of the world: floods and warm weather led to a failed anchovy season in Peru; torrential downpours and mud slides besieged southern California; droughts caused uncontrollable forest fires in Indonesia; coral in the Pacific Ocean was bleached by hotter than average water; and shipping through the Panama Canal was restricted by belowaverage rainfall.

AN OUTLINE OF TAKATU-RIVER FLOODED BY TYPHOON NO.9

So many times Western Sanin district located western part of Japan had a flood disaster by typhoon and localized torrential downpour during the rainy season. In this year the typhoon No.9 gave the second biggest damage by a flood to Takatu-river after the World War II. But serious casualty did not occur, such as he floodwater broke down the riverbank. That should lead the policy management system of cities around river is so good that the action to give admonish to efuge is quickly. But two problems were arisen. One was leakage of water from the riverbank and bases. It must be important to embrace better system considering land use. The other was that some flood escapes around river were flooded. It prevented from taking refuge. This problem remains to be solved.

William Notman's stereo perspective: The Victoria bridge

Abstract There was great disappointment in Montreal on Friday 24 August 1860, for the long-anticipated landing at Montreal of Edward Albert, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of England) had been postponed to Saturday by a torrential downpour. This was to be the first visit by an heir to the British throne to the North American colony and everyone was excited, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Prince. However, most people did not hear that the landing had been delayed, so when the rain stopped in the afternoon, Immense crowds flocked towards the wharves and Commissioner Street, which for some hours were perfectly black with human beings. Not less than 50 000 persons were present. Almost all Montreal was there. Most of the shops and almost all other places of business were shut and no business was done. Manufactories were closed.1

INHIBITORY EFFECT OF POROUS ASPHALT PAVEMENTS ON FLOODS IN URBAN AREAS

The surface of a rapidly urbanized city has been covered by asphalt pavements, concrete buildings, and other heat retaining structures. This coverage causes its higher temperatures even in the evening and so-called a heat island phenomenum can be found. The accumulated heat makes ambient air warmer and causes an updraft of the air, being followed by a localized torrential downpour. The materials used for these structures are usually unpearmeable and help the rain water run off quickly into sewer pipe through their surfaces.This study places an emphases on porous asphalt mixtures that can keep the water in themselves and discharge it gradually. The effect of porous asphalt pavements preventing the flood is examined by a case study in Meguro area where an actual flood took place and wide area was covered by water.It was found that it is very effective to employ the porous asphalt pavements to prevent this kind of flood. The void is recommended to be larger than 20%.

Where Have All the Earthquakes Gone?

T he sky turns a seasick shade of green, signaling the impending arrival of a torrential downpour, complete with lightning galore and howling winds. But moments before the first fat raindrops hit the ground, the gale ceases abruptly in a pregnant pause the calm before the storm. Seismologists have their own version of that phenomenon. Called seismic quiescence, the term describes how a particular patch of ground will sometimes stop producing its normal quotient of minor earthquakes just before a big one hits. That's why geophysicists James H. Dieterich and Paul Okubo grew interested when they noticed a lull in tremors on one side of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano during the last few years. The quiescent area sits on Kilauea's eastern flank, just south of the volcanically active east rift zone, according to Dieterich, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Okubo works at the USGS' Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. On its own, a simple observation of quiescence might not capture much attention among seismologists. Because faults behave irregularly from one year to the next, some regions may take a rest for a short spell without ever generating a big quake. Quiescence does not always precede something important. But the Kilauea case stands out because Dieterich and Okubo have discovered that the currently inactive region has a history of going silent before large quakes. The quiescent zone is an irregularly shaped block of crust measuring about 18 kilometers on its longest side and extending to a depth of 10 kilometers. Researchers believe that a major fault cuts through the bottom of that block, forming a nearly horizontal break that separates the upper crust from deeper regions. Riding on that fault, the top layer is slipping toward the ocean with unusual haste. Surveys using Global Positioning System satellites show the southeastern part of the volcano moving seaward at the geologically exceptional rate of 10 centimeters per year. Calculations suggest that at the depth of the fault, the top layer is slipping even faster at 25 centimeters per year, the fastest creep ever detected along a fault (SN: 6/12/93, p.382).

Engineering in the Progressive Era: A New Look at Frederick Haynes Newell and the U.S. Reclamation Service

Engineering in the Progressive Era: A New Look at Frederick Haynes Newell and the U.S. Reclamation Service DONALD C. JACKSON The passage of the national irrigation law was one of the great steps not only in the forward progress of the United States but of all mankind. [Theodore Roosevelt, 1903]1 The cumulative effect of the barrage of favorable publicity for reclamation has been the conditioning of the public mind to an unquestioning acceptance . . . that federal reclamation is a great and unmixed good, and that it is the major if not the exclusive factor in irrigated agriculture. [Stanley Davison, 1952]2 The American West constitutes an environment well suited to transformation through the agency of technology. As Walter Prescott Webb illustrated in his classic 1931 book The Great Plains, the expanse of America lying west of the ninety-eighth meridian (a line running through the center of Kansas) is largely defined by the lack of precipitation.3 Water is a key factor in the economic and social development of the arid region, and water control technologies are Dr. Jackson is assistant professor of history at Lafayette College. He gratefully acknowledges comments from Donald J. Pisani, Jack Cell, and several Technology and Culture referees that helped make this a better article. Some of the research underlying the article was completed as part of a contract between FraserDESIGN and the Bureau of Reclamation for documentation of historic resources affected by the Central Arizona Project; however, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of FraserDESIGN, the Bureau of Reclamation, or any agency employees. 'Telegram from Theodore Roosevelt to National Irrigation Congress, September 15, 1903, reprinted in F. H. Newell, comp., Proceedings ofthe First Conference of Engineers of the Reclamation Service (Washington, D.C., 1904), p. 121.¿Stanley Davison, The Leadership of the Reclamation Movement, 1875—1902 (New York, 1979), pp. 32-33 (reprint of Ph.D. diss., University of California, 1952). ’Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (Boston, 1931), pp. 3-44.© 1993 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/93/3403-0004$01.00 539 540 Donald C. Jackson especially important because moisture is not evenly distributed over the landscape in either density or seasonality.4 Torrential downpours might dump millions of gallons of water on the desert, but these storms can be spaced years apart during periods of severe drought. Most rivers depend on melting snowpack rather than rainfall to sustain their flow, and westerners have long recognized the impor­ tance of storage dams in capturing both torrential floods and spring “runoff” from snowcapped mountains.0 Without dams, huge quanti­ ties of flood waters can be lost. If stored behind artificial barriers, however, this water can support sustained growth of agriculture, industry (e.g., mining and hydroelectric power), and municipalities.6 Of these, irrigated agriculture (often called reclamation) historically constitutes the most widespread use of water in the West.7 Although irrigation in the West predates the era of European settlement, it started a new phase in 1847 when Mormon pioneers began diverting small creeks onto desert land near Utah’s Great Salt Lake.8 Other Anglo groups followed the Mormons and soon estab- ’Extensive references on western water history are provided in Lawrence B. Lee, Reclaiming the American West: An Historiography and Guide (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1980). Also see Donald J. Pisani, “Deep and Troubled Waters: A New Field of Western History,” New Mexico Historical Review 63 (October 1988): 311-31; and Lawrence B. Lee, “Water Resource History: A New Field of Historiography?” Pacific Historical Review 57 (November 1988): 457—67. Notable recent books in the field include William L. Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Berkeley, 1982); Donald J. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1859-1931 (Berkeley, 1984); James Earl Sherow, Watering the Valley: Development along the High Plains ofthe Arkansas River (Topeka, Kans., 1990); Norris Hundley, The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Berkeley, 1992); and Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902 (Albuquerque, N.M...

Fan Formation by the Sediment Runoff Due to River Bed Erosion

We had a localized torrential downpour near the Fukui-Gifu prefectural border in September, 1965 (we call this Okuetsu Rainstorm). Especially, Nishitani village in Fukui prefecture (after this disaster, residents in this village moved to another place and now this district is included in Ohno city) suffered crushing damage from this storm. Namely, in Nakajima district which was the main part of the Nishitani village, before the disaster the number of households was 154, but after the disaster, 58 households were swept away and 86 were buried. A distinguishing feature of this disaster was that the bulk of the houses in the main part of the Nakajima district situated on the debris fan which had been formed by the sediment runoff from the Kamata river was buried second floor deep in sediment but not swept away. Judging from the fact-finding survey and data analysis, these houses were buried by the sediment which outflowed and deposited from the Kamata river taking the type of the sediment flow rather than the debris flow.In this paper, in order to reproduce the burying process of the Nakajima district by the sediment flow, sediment hydrograph of the Kamata river is evaluated by the calculation of the bed level variation at first, then by using this sediment hydrograph as a input boundary condition, simulation of the horizontally twodimensional bed level variation in Nakajima district is carried out, and it is found that the calculated results are comparatively in good agreement with actual phenomena.

Debris flow and its countermeasures in Japan

Japan is an island lying off the east border of the Asian Continent. Its total area is about 370,000 km2 75% of the whole land area of Japan is mountainous. The lowlands, chiefly plains and alluvial fans, that constitute the remaining 25% are formed from sediments which have flowed there from the mountains in the past. In these lowlands live 85% of our population of 110 million people. Geologically, japan is extremely fragile and her topography is very steep. Under these conditions, sediment disasters caused by debris flow have occurred by torrential downpours, typhoons or the seasonal rain front in every year somewhere in Japan. These sediment disasters are the most harmful natural disaster to human life and property in Japan. For this reason the Sabo Law (Erosion Control Law) was enacted in 1897, and the government has exerted every effort to prevent such disasters. Thus Japan is one of the most advanced countries with regard to the study and research of sediment disasters and to the development of countermeasures.

An Investigative Expedition of the Asian Mainland

At present and in the future throughout the world, the silver [white] race and the gold [yellow] race stand in opposition. The white race is possessed now of enormous strength, like a torrential downpour of rain, and of speed, like the galloping of swift horses. With the use of steam power and driven by electrical energy, the loftiest mountain peaks are low and surging waves on the high seas are calm. Furthermore, they have extraordinary courage, think cautiously, and are well-endowed with an adventurous spirit.

河川底質の水銀汚染について ＩＩ 水門川底質中の水銀濃度の経年変化と濃度因子

A follow-up study was carried out on secular changes from 1974 to 1977 of mercury concentrations in bottom sediments of the Suimon River and other rivers polluted by the effluent from a chemical plant which had been manufacturing acetaldehyde with mercurial catalyst. The results obtained were summarized as follows. 1) Mercury concentrations in sediments from each sampling station were found to have fairly changed in the period. 2) There was no possibility of additional pollution by other industrial sources. 3) There was very little possibility of release of mercury from bottom sediments. 4) The changes of mercury concentrations in sediments appeared to relate closely to the state of rainfalls, especially outbreak of torrential downpours in the catchment area. 5) Torrential downpours were observed to exert a considerable influence on the change of particle size distribution of sediments. 6) Mercury concentrations in sediments correlated significantly to the contents of fine particle fraction of sediments.

Sotho fertility symbolism.

This paper deals with the traditional beliefs and mythical folklore of the Sotho-Tswana ethnic tribes of South Africa. Their ritual practices are predominantly concerned with the weather, the vicissitudes of the seasonal cycle, and, especially the rain-making powers of certain individuals. It is well known that rain, in all civilizations, is a symbol of fertility. Thus, adolescent girls and young women, as mediators of the association between water and fertility, can be relied upon to bring the clouds and torrential downpours. The characteristic Sesotho explanation that babies come from the river is clearly an allusion to the water of the womb, and the river is generally recognized as a methaphor of the womb. Also, the onset of menarche involves rituals having to do with the drawing and pouring of water, another clear allusion to the beginning of fertility.