ICLR to “take the stage” at Kobe conference

Two researchers who work with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) will be heading this week to the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan.Dr. Gordon Bean and Dr. Slobodan Simonovic are set to present research to the conference, which has gained the spotlight in the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster.Dr. Simonovic, ICLR’s chair, engineering, and professor of engineering at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), will go as part of the UNESCO delegation, to present the “International Flood Initiative”. ICLR executive director Paul Kovacs says the research is important, particularly in light of many recent flooding incidents, including not only the tsunami disaster, but also catastrophic flooding in California and Europe in the past few weeks. The research resulted from a recent UN conference hosted by the ICLR in London, Ontario. Kovacs adds that he expects at the conference UNESCO, a UN organization, will announce the “Water Initiative”, a global strategy on flooding risks. Dr. Bean, ICLR’s policy chair and UWO professor, will take part in a panel discussion on risks for urban centers, speaking specifically on “Climate Change and Increasing Risks in Urban Areas”. Kovacs says it is a great honor for ICLR to be “in the thick of things” at the Kobe conference, adding, “this is the largest and most important international meeting on disaster loss prevention in a decade”.He also says the conference aims to promote international cooperation on disaster mitigation, but that the research will also be important back here in Canada.At the same time, ICLR is in discussions about hosting another UN conference, possibly in the fall, on the timely subject of early warning systems.ICLR was established by Canada’s p&c insurers in 1998.