The preparatory meeting for cooperation between IKCEST and Disaster Risk Reduction Department of UNESCO was held in Beijing on October 20,2015.
The meeting was presided over by Yi Jian, Deputy Director-elect of IKCEST and attended by CAE Member Sun Jiulin, CAE Member Wang Hao, Wang Juanle, Director of the Resources and Environmental Data Centre of the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Deng Li, Senior Engineer of the National Meteorological Centre, Xie Wenjun, Senior Engineer of the Information Centre of the Ministry of Water Resources, together with Liu Chang, Fu Zhijie and other staff members from the IKCEST Secretariat.
Deputy Director-elect Yi Jian briefed all attending CAE Members and experts on the background of the meeting. In September this year, an IKCEST delegation visited UNESCO Headquarters to report on its work progress over the past year and won high recognition from the UNESCO side. UNESCO then put forward specific requirements for future work at IKCEST, including positively responding to UNESCO's global initiatives of major concern and providing knowledge services on disease forecasting, disaster early warnings and identification of animals and plants. On October 17, the Disaster Risk Reduction Department of the Natural Sciences Sector of UNESCO called IKCEST and put forward specific ideas for future cooperation with IKCEST and proposed to hold an international video conference at 15:30 on October 21 to discuss relevant issues.
Based on the ideas of cooperation put forward by the UNESCO side, all attending CAE Members and experts held full and detailed exchanges and discussions, explored potential fields of cooperation between the two sides, discussed the status of relevant data resources construction in China, and examined and considered the focal points of concern and the positioning of needs of the two sides, as well as possible difficulties in the cooperation. As for the core issues and key resources in the database building, the attending CAE Members and experts reached the following consensus: user positioning and user needs must be specified first; as standards must go first for the data gathering, it is necessary to discuss the issue of standards formulation. In addition, data quality and data sharing authorizations are also issues to be paid attention to. It is suggested that CAE Members should play a leading role in the disaster database building, cooperation should be forged with the concerned Chinese ministries and commissions and existing resources must be fully utilized. As cooperation in the disaster prevention science popularization, education and training is highly feasible, relevant work should be implemented as soon as possible.
It is suggested that IKCEST should work with the Ministry of Finance, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, international public welfare foundations and other organizations to get financial support. It is proposed that a special committee should be set up to coordinate future efforts. All the attending CAE Members and experts unanimously agreed that the establishment of a global disaster risk reduction database would be of great significance for China and the world and would provide data support for China's Going Global strategy of economic development and genuinely serve China's national strategy.
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