Motoyuki Ushiyama

A questionnaire how to collect storm and disaster information

This paper reports the disaster information collecting method when heavy rainfall occurred in a questionnaire research. The questionnaire on a web site from June to September 2001 got 228 answers. 99% of them were interested in disaster prevention or meteorological disaster. About 90% respondents answered that accumulated precipitation and forecast precipitation are necessary information when a heavy rainfall occurred. The actual situation that accumulated precipitation information is little on Internet or in the other media should be improved. 92% respondents answered that the method of information collecting when a heavy rainfall occurred was the Internet. The answer “Television” was almost the same as “Internet”, which indicates Internet is already regarded as useful media for disaster information collection. The answer “Browser phone”, which can browse WWW from the cellular phone (e.g., “imode”), was 36%.

FIELD INVESTIGATION OF THE FLOOD DISASTER IN SOUTH-WEST AREA OF SRI LANKA OCURRED IN MAY 2003

In the southwest of Sri Lanka, a heavy flood occurred on 17-18 May in 2003, which caused severe river inundations and landslides in a wide area. About 300 persons were killed, and houses, farm products and infrastructures were heavily damaged. In order to investigate this flood and sediment disaster from the hydrological and hydraulic aspects, the committee on Hydroscience and Hydraulic Engineering, Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE) delegated its members whose major are hydrology, hydraulic engineering and river engineering as a flood investigation team by JSCE. In this paper, results of the field investigation are shown for three river basins in Sri Lanka that were severely damaged by flood and landslide disaster induced by the heavy rainfall.