By Natnipha Vimuktanon
Japan and Thailand have been hit by a number of powerful natural
disasters in recent years. This summer, three inquisitive AIT Disaster
Preparedness, Mitigation and Management (DPMM) students spent their
inter-semester break in each of the two countries to learn first-hand
about the latest in disaster mitigation, recovery, and
reconstruction.
AIT is celebrating 2012 International Day for Disaster Reduction on
12-13 October. This year's theme is "Women and Girls - the [in]Visible
Force of Resilience". Please see the program: https://oldweb.ait.ac.th/news-and-events/2012/events/international-day-for-disaster-reduction/
Ms. Pham Thi Hong, Ms. Veronique Morin, and Ms. Atrida Hadianti
recently completed the first two months of Kyoto University’s
International Course on Approaches for Disaster-Resilience, a program
offered for the first time in Japan and Thailand.
The certificate-level short course was initiated by Kyoto University’s
Consortium for International Human Resource Development towards the
Reconstruction of Disaster-Resilient Countries. AIT is a member of the
consortium that includes six universities from four countries in ASEAN.
The Vietnamese, Canadian and Indonesian nationals, who were joined by
two other AIT students from the Geotechnical and Earth Resources field
of study, Mr. Varis Siripunthana and Mr. Nachanok
Chanmee from Thailand, were among 30 young engineers who
attended. They joined fifteen Japanese students from Kyoto University
and others from Chulalongkorn University, and Kasetsart University. All
spent August in Japan and September in Thailand, before starting a
four-month online course offered from Kyoto University.
The big takeaway for the AIT threesome was the chance to visit
disaster-affected areas and evaluate the links between theory and
practice. Study field trips were arranged to Kobe, epicenter of the
1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake which claimed over 6,000 lives, and to
cities in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures in the Tohoku region of Japan -
which were devastated from last year’s mega-earthquake and
tsunami.
Back in Thailand, all attended lectures at Kasetsart University and
then visited tsunami-struck areas of southern provinces Phuket and
Krabi. AIT’s own Dr. Pennung Warnitchai, Dr. Noppadol Phien-wej, and
Dr. Sutat Weesakul were among the lecturers.
“We were able to learn about updated research - what research work is
happening now, where the problems arise from, and how to solve them.
One of our professors in Thailand talked about a landslide and a
warning system he just installed one month ago and then brought us to
the site,” said Ms. Veronique Morin, 34, a DPMM doctoral student from
Edmonton, Canada.
For Ms. Morin, it was significant that despite Japan’s considerable
efforts to construct infrastructure to hold back the sea so many
coastal cities were still devastated by last year’s tsunami.
“They used a lot of engineering measures like high tsunami seawalls.
It’s interesting to note that some of them worked properly while many
failed. It gives us another perspective that even in an advanced
country like Japan, which has spent so much money on engineering
protective works -- it was still not 100 percent perfect. When you are
looking at natural disasters, you still have to look at other kinds of
social measures. This is an important lesson because it showed the
failures which we can learn from,” she explained.
DPMM Master’s student, Ms. Pham Thi Hong, 26, from Vietnam, was struck
by Japan’s post-disaster management of waste. She explains: “At the
earthquake damaged areas, we saw large amounts of debris. Now they are
beginning to store the waste and systematically separate things. We
also found that some places were rebuilt while some places were not.
People still have to live in temporary shelters. We learned how they
manage and organize the shelters for these victims. We also listened to
first-hand accounts of officials and community leaders on how people
managed their lives and took care of victims.”
Fellow Master’s student Ms. Atrida Hadianti, 25, a native of Indonesia,
gained insight into how Japan was able to reconstruct so well after two
monumental disasters.
“I could see from my time in Kobe that the city had a strong will to
recover so fast. They were so organized through their recovery plan. I
think they have prepared the city to cope better for any possible
future disaster. In Iwate and Miyagi, I found people to be really
organized about debris management, something which I had never thought
about,” Ms. Hadianti said.
The three were amazed at how Japanese scientists and the engineers
treat the debris to make it environmentally safe, and at the meticulous
measuring of soils to assess their environmental acceptability. Also
impressive are plans to use waste materials for building dams and green
parks, and to reuse disaster area soils to build protective
embankments. These could also be used by people during evacuation time,
they reported.
Ms. Hadianti added: “They collect and separate the debris to try to
reuse them as much as possible. Private sector firms took the debris
for treatment and for later use in the construction of materials. They
really emphasize the reuse and recycling of the wastes in a systematic
way that I haven’t seen in other countries. In Japan they attempt to
reuse every piece of debris, and minimize the garbage thrown into
landfills.”
Distinctions between Japan and Thailand were evident in terms of coping
with disaster and also post-disaster management, they said. Thailand
has an advantage in mobilizing communities on the ground while Japanese
people still rely on government to protect them, which is more of a
top-down approach.
“We feel that Japan learned so much from their disasters. Scientist and
engineers conduct so much research so that they can keep improving and
learning. That’s why the recovery right now may be taking a little bit
longer because they really take time to do detailed study and research
on every aspect of the process. They want to make sure that they build
it back and improve their resilience better.
“When we visited the schools in Phuket, they exhibited a system to cope
with disaster. If a tsunami ever takes place again, they will know
where to go and where to move the students. They are very systematic
and very community-based,” Ms. Morin said.
“But I think we still need to have top-down and bottom-up approaches at
the same time.”
For more information on Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and
Management (DPMM) programs at AIT visit: http://dpmm.ait.ac.th/wp/
OR e-mail: dpmm@ait.ac.th
File photo: Tsunami flooding in
Phuket.