The International Flood Initiative (IFI) is a joint initiative in collaboration with international organizations such as UNESCO-IHP, WMO, UNISDR, UNU, IAHS and IAHR. IFI is a response to the increasing number of water-related disasters, deaths and widespread socio-economic damage to goods and assets as well as to communities and society itself.
IFI promotes an integrated approach to flood management to maximize the long-term benefits of floods and to minimize the hardship, loss of life and socio-economic damage to goods and assets that result from floods. It also follows guiding principles such as living with floods, equity for all stakeholders, empowered participation, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinary, and international and regional cooperation. To achieve this, the initiative focuses on research, training, information networking, promoting good governance and providing technical assistance. IFI Website: http://www.ifi-home.info/
In addition, ICHARM has promoted the establishment of the Platform on Water and Disaster by the relevant governmental agencies in some Asian counties. The Platform envisions a future wherein decisions and actions for reducing water-related disaster risk are well supported by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained risk communication. The Platform works to connect the demand for sound and timely decisions and actions taken by policy-makers and local communities with the supply of disaster risk information that is generated from integrated risk assessment and risk change identification. In the future the Platform will be extended to Africa and Latin America.
Partners: International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management, International Association of Hydrological Sciences, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research, UNESCO International Hydrological Programme, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, United Nations University, World Meteorological Organization
Target Segment of the Conference: Hydrological Products
Relationship to other Conference Segments:
Hydrological services of the Platform on Water and Disaster are based on the Hydrological products of IFI.
Geographical coverage:
Global
Connection to the development and delivery of a hydrological service for prosperity:
IFI supports water-related disaster risk reduction in participating countries through actions based on (1) data and statistics, (2) risk and resilience assessment, (3) risk and resilience change identification, (4) support in sound policy-making, (5) support in community of practice.