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Source: ICHARM website: www.icharm.pwri.go.jp

Dr. Stakhiv was elected to be chairman of the Advisory Board at the Official Opening Ceremony and Commemorative Symposium held September 14-15, 2006, at United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan.

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA - September 13, 2006. Dr. Eugene Z. Stakhiv, a water resources specialist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources (IWR), has been appointed to the Advisory Board of the International Center for Water Hazards and Risk Management (ICHARM), located in Tsukuba, Japan. ICHARM was established by the Japan Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT) as part of its Public Works Research Institute (PWRI), and was formally established as an IHP global water center under the auspices of UNESCO in March 2006.

Dr. Stakhiv was nominated for the ICHARM Advisory Board by the U.S. National IHP Committee and subsequently approved by the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO (U.S. State Department). His election as IHP’s Group 1 representative (North America and Western Europe) was unanimously approved by the UNESCO-IHP 36-member nation Intergovernmental Council (IGC) at its bi-annual meeting held in Paris, France, 3-7 July 2006. Dr. Stakhiv will be participating in the inaugural meeting of the Advisory Board at the ICHARM Official Opening Ceremony and Commemorative Symposium on 14-15 September 2006 at United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan.

The mission of ICHARM is to function as a world centre of excellence for providing and assisting in the implementation of best practicable strategies to localities, nations and regions world-wide to manage the risk of water disasters. ICHARM has been proposed to house the Secretariat for the upcoming International Flood Initiative (IFI), a major global program being launched jointly by UNESCO-IHP and the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and other partners.

ICHARM has been tracking the frequency of water related disasters and published results (see graph at right) which highlight the trend of an increasing number of annual natural disaster events world-wide. Combined with trends of rapid population growth in highly concentrated urban areas; changing precipitation intensity and distribution patterns; and potential sea level rise from climate change, there is much concern for escalating property damages and increasing loss of life associated with future water-related disasters.

Dr. Stakhiv holds a PhD in Water Resources Systems from Johns Hopkins University and has enjoyed a 37-year career with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He has worked at IWR since 1976, with his assignments encompassing a full range of national–scope domestic water resources planning and policy studies, along with a wide variety of international water–related assignments. His international work includes an extended overseas tour in Iraq as the inaugural senior U.S. advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources. In 2004 he served as the acting senior science advisor at the U.S. Mission to UNESCO in Paris, France. He is currently the U.S. Co-Director of the International Joint Commission’s $13 million Upper Lakes Study, after successfully directing the completion of technical studies for the five-year, $20 million Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River Study.

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