In 2018 the Japanese country was hit by a typhoon with major floods and victims (220 persons died) as a result. HKV colleagues Bas Kolen and Bob Maaskant, together with two other Dutch experts of Deltares and Rijkswaterstaat, were invited to travel to Hokkaido in Japan.
They joined a Hydraulic Engineering conference and they exchanged knowledge and experience with among others persons of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, the Hokkaido Development Office, the River Center Hokkaido and the Universities of Hokkaido and Tokyo.
Japan is interested in the Dutch approach for dealing with the circumstances of Climate Change and Flood Risk. They are especially interested in our approach for flood defenses, how we take climate change into account and our work on the awareness of floods and evacuation. For the Netherlands we also can learn a lot of the experience in Japan with flood disasters.
The Dutch and Japanese experts will start some concrete research activities with involvement of the government, knowledge institutions and companies coming year. This year (2019) a Japanese delegation will visit the Netherlands.
January, 17th 2019
