Taiwan is located in the East Asian monsoon climate area and has average annual rainfall of 2,510mm. Moreover, 80% of rainfall occurs in summer and is mostly caused by typhoons. The amount of rainfall is high and the instantaneous intensity makes it extremely hard hitting, with some low-lying and subsidence areas prone to flooding. In addition, due to climate change and the greenhouse effect, the number of typhoons that hit Taiwan and the intensity of rainstorms have increased in recent years. The planting area for domestically grown rice has also decreased and the area of drought-intolerant crops increased, indicating that the environment for agricultural produce has become severe. In such a situation, an efficient disaster prevention and alert system can reduce administrative procedures and provide more time for contingency measures. Management offices can then better apply disaster prevention related preparation work, and be prepared before disasters occur by implementing comprehensive disaster protection measures to improve disaster prevention and relief work.
The program aims to simplify the administrative operations of the Irrigation Agency and its management offices, reduce paper reporting and improve disaster prevention and relief functions. To that end, the electronic system is expected to raise awareness about the importance of safety inspections of agricultural irrigation gates, farmland drainage and irrigation ponds at management offices. As such, the implementation of relevant work, disaster prevention and relief mechanisms together with the maintenance, management and protection of irrigation facilities, maintaining critical agricultural irrigation gates, farmland drainage and agricultural irrigation ponds ensures they function normally during flooding season. Integrate and build an "Irrigation Disaster Prevention and Relief System" so as to expand the functionality of the original irrigation disaster alert system and ensure it conforms to the current information security framework and program development environment. Through daily electronic inspection management measures, the pre-flooding season sampling mechanism, disaster contingency alerts, post-disaster report management system, and integrated SMS or Email platform provide timely alerts. In addition, the labor force is reduced and the efficiency of disaster prevention operation management greatly improved.
This project has been completed
(1) Building of a disaster prevention system and integrated platform and
(2) Offers of administrative assistance to support the two major working items related to disaster prevention operations.
This project assisted in maintaining the original irrigation disaster reporting system, completed building an irrigation disaster prevention and relief system and expanded the functions of related modules. It also assisted in checking the accuracy of coordinate data related to important structures, and conducted comprehensive tests of the overall system. After checking the irrigation disaster prevention and relief system was officially launched in November 2020 when Taiwan was hit by Typhoon Atsani. This project involved 129 personnel completing four sessions of irrigation disaster prevention and relief system training on 10/26, 10/27 and 12/4, 2020. Through system promotion and operation training, flood control personnel at the Irrigation Agency and its management offices are now familiar with the disaster prevention and relief system which will be officially launched at the end of the year and conduct annual inspection operations to enhance disaster prevention, relief mechanisms and contingency measures.
This project assisted in confirming the definition of water intake gates and discharge (control) water gates (disaster prevention and safety), and completed attribute confirmation operations for the review of locations listed in the inventory, with a total of 58 important agricultural irrigation gates. The objective was to improve the efficiency of disaster prevention operations and related disaster prevention administration, by increasing disaster prevention and relief work capabilities of management offices. This involved completing two work review meetings and also assisted in compiling a self-checklist for each management office and recording the result and error status of sampling inspections on monitored facilities before flooding season. This year, assistance was provided for six disaster events including Typhoon Vongfong, flooding on May 22, Typhoon Hagupit, Typhoon Mekkhala, Typhoon Bavi and Typhoon Atsani, and during each event the project successfully assisted with system reporting operations and disaster assistance work.