You may not be aware, but it won’t surprise you to learn that the United Nations has its own university. They have more than a dozen campuses around the world, all with the motto "Advancing knowledge for human security, peace, and development."

And, for five Asian nations, they are initiating a new course focused and designed around preparing for bigger floods.

Experts from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri Lanka will head to the U.N. University in Thailand to partake in the three-month course. Focused around making an effort to foresee and mitigate flood damage, the course has been initiated as a result of the rise in storm severity and frequency in the region.

The course, announced on the 15th, was spurred by the scientific belief that many of the cities and mass-population areas in these countries are under risk of being submerged.

As the most frequent and deadly natural disaster in Asia, floods have long been a way of life. However, we only need to look at the past several months to see that the severity has grown. More than 3,000 people have been killed in the recent monsoons and storms, affecting a total of 100 million people, and racking up property damage well in to the billions of dollars.

"Floods created the fertile plains on which agriculture and populations have flourished," says Janos Bogardi, Vice-Rector of UNU, which leads the training programme.

The success of control systems, coupled with fast-growing populations, has drawn more people and investment into flood-prone areas, driving up the stakes involved in a catastrophic storm. With climate change threatening to increase the intensity, frequency and magnitude of storms, the time to assess the risk to people and property, and to act on that information, is now.

The pilot program set up by the UNU involves a total of six weeks hands-on, and a subsequent eight weeks of onsite activities to train officials in creating "what if" scenarios. These scenarios include:

• Estimate probable maximum precipitation and model extreme floods;
• Develop worst case estimates of flood peaks and simulate inundation; and
• Assess the number of people and the fragility of property under threat in flood zones.

Furthermore, the course will attempt to implement case studies that will help trainees and trainers alike to design appropriate mitigation measures, and work to standardize damage estimation methodologies for flood prediction. Case studies — which are rare due to the technology needed to design such simulations — will be acquired from Japan – one of the few countries technologically advanced to do so.

Other cases will include the 1991 storm that dropped half-meter of rain on Ormoc City, Philippines, in just six hours, resulting in more than 5,000 deaths; the three days of rainfall in December 1999 in northern Venezuela, which resulted in massive mudslides that killed tens of thousands and caused some $3.5 billion in economic damage; and flood experiences of Hanoi, Vietnam, home to nearly four million people.

Prior to a follow-up meeting, students will be provided with a state of the art GIS (Geographic Information System) so that they can create fully rendered 3-D models to run more effective simulations.

"It may be human nature to gamble rather than invest when rare but potentially large losses are involved. However, climate change is changing the odds of the gamble — the threat of catastrophic flood is growing, and with it the importance of devoting time and resources to remove the consequences of surprise," says Srikantha Herath, Senior Academic Officer at UNU. "We need to anticipate and prepare now for the growing intensity and frequency of storms said to lie ahead."

When a catastrophic storm hits, it is extremely difficult to prevent widespread flooding. The emphasis should be shifted from the impossibility of ‘fail-safe’ systems to ’safe-fail’ — knowing in advance the steps needed to minimize damage and destruction when rare catastrophic floods overwhelm even the best systems.

UNU: Preparing for Bigger Floods (PDF) via ENN: Five Asian nations to study flood, climate risks