Topic of the Month: March 2010
click here to see the past topics

Flood Preparedness Standard
Posted by Prof. Takeuchi and Dr. Ali Chavoshian  (ICHARM-Japan)

A "Flood Disaster Preparedness ISO" has been proposed to the 4th International Symposium of Flood Defence in Toronto on May 8th, 2008 as well as some other occasions by the IFI secretariat at ICHARM.

The Flood Disaster Preparedness Standard is an international standard that any community of any scale is suggested to follow in order to make it prepared for natural hazards to minimize their negative impacts and lead to quick recovery when they occur. The standard is not a list of facilities nor equipments to be installed, but rather a list of institutional procedure that any community commit to follow to assure a positive spiral be installed into its community management system leading to a continuous improvement in disaster preparedness. There are already some, although focuses are different:

- US National Fire Protection Association (NFPA): NFPA 1600, Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs,2007 Edition

- ISO (2006):International Workshop Agreement , Ref number IWA 5:2006(E) Emergency preparedness 

- ISO 9001 and 9004: A framework for disaster preparedness  and also the  Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act of 1997 of Japan 

Such standard may be designed under the following principles: 

(1) Designed according to the local reality  and manageable within the local context and administrative framework 

(2) Decided, implemented, checked and revised by the community authorities regularly and have a built-in mechanism for continuous improvement in a positive spiral based on plan-do-check-action cycle . 

(3) Linked with and consistent with the national  and regional emergency management  scheme . 

(4)  Supported by the best practicable disaster  forecasting system available to the nation/region.  

(5)  Internally & externally reviewed  and checked regularly and re-licensing procedure should be built-in. 

(6)  Evolve with societal change  such as land-use change. 

More....  Proposal (PDF, 30KB) and; Presentation (PDF,605KB )