PREVENIR: Japan-Argentina Cooperation Project for Heavy Rain and Urban Flood Disaster Prevention

This presentation provides an overall summary of the project PREVENIR and recent activities about data assimilation and numerical weather prediction (NWP) research. PREVENIR is an international cooperation project between Argentina and Japan since 2022 for five years under the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) program jointly funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). The main goal is to develop an impact-based early warning system for heavy rains and urban floods designed for two highly vulnerable urban basins in Argentina: one located in Buenos Aires Province and the other in Córdoba Province. PREVENIR takes advantage of leading research on simulations and Big Data Assimilation (BDA) with the Japan’s flagship supercomputer “Fugaku” and its predecessor “K” and develops a total package for disaster prevention, namely, monitoring, quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE), nowcasting, BDA and NWP, hydrological model prediction, warning communications, public education, and capacity building. Here, the Japanese leading institutions in the scientific research and operational services, i.e., RIKEN, Osaka University, the International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM), and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) closely work with the Argentinian counterparts, i.e., the National Meteorological Service, the National Water Institute, and the National Research Council of Argentina under the strong support of JICA, JST, and Argentinian Foreign Affairs Ministry. Heavy rains and urban floods are important global issues under the changing climate. The total package for disaster prevention will be the first of its kind in Argentina and will provide useful tools and recommendations for the implementation of similar systems in other parts of the world.