New Course on Flood Risk Mitigation (FRM-1)

ADPC is pleased to announce the first course on Flood Risk Mitigation (FRM-1) scheduled for 16-27 September 2002 in Bangkok, Thailand. FRM is designed for disaster managers with flood hazards as their main area of responsibility. ADPC encourages applicants who are:

• National and city administrators
• Development and planning authorities
• Water engineers
• Staff from housing, public works and water resources management departments
• NGO staff working in flood-prone areas, and
• Staff of government, non-governmental and international agencies from countries prone to flooding.

The course offers an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to reduction of the impact of floods on life, property, crops and infrastructure. Using lessons learned from both successful and failed experiences with structural, non-structural and less-structural strategies, the course will enable participants to understand and analyze causative factors and create recommendations appropriate to their country’s flood situation. The FRM course is adapted from ADPC’s Urban Flood Mitigation (UFM) course to give complete coverage of the topic.

Capacity Building in Disaster Management: A Way to Nation-Building in East Timor

Before East Timor achieved independence in May 2001, the United Nations Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) laid a foundation for disaster management in the country at a time when key stakeholders were hammering out and fine-tuning the country’s development plans. There is a fully-staffed National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) and a National Disaster Management Plan that outlines disaster preparedness at national and district levels. This move is significant as it sends the message that in a disaster-prone country like East Timor, disasters and disaster management are central to sustainable development and poverty reduction. 

In line with this initiative, UNDP developed a capacity-building program on disaster management, one component of which is a one-year training project which ADPC developed based on a comprehensive training needs assessment done in the country last December. Recently, Zenaida D Willison, TED Director, returned from the second round of training in Dili, East Timor. So far, ADPC has trained more than a hundred staff of the new government on disaster management and training of trainers.

ADPC is undertaking this project in collaboration with UNHCR, which provides assistance in the delivery of courses and in improving training materials. ADPC and UNHCR will conduct courses on Emergency Management in July, Disaster Management Orientation in the districts in September, and Community Based Disaster Management from October to November. 

The development objective of this project is to contribute to the establishment of an effective disaster management capacity in East Timor, encompassing not only the provision of relief but also the identification and widespread advocacy of appropriate mitigation and preparedness measures and development of a recovery capacity.