Taiwan Today

International outreach showcases Taiwan’s strengths in disaster preparedness and response.

The infamous 921 earthquake struck central Taiwan in late 1999 with a force that led to damage causing over 2,400 deaths across the country. Forging a bond that has endured to this day, a Turkish team was one of the first international search-and-rescue groups that arrived to offer aid. When southern Türkiye was hit  by a magnitude 7.8 quake in February 2023, Taiwan leaped to reciprocate, sending 130 personnel, five trained dogs and four tons of supplies for disaster relief. Notably, this mission marked the first time a Taiwanese search-and-rescue team was recognized on the list of disaster response teams coordinated by the U.N.

While images of successful rescues at the scene of a disaster leave powerful impressions, Taiwan’s contingency work with international partners in preparedness is just as instrumental in saving lives. Secretary General Li Wei-sen (李維森) of the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) said Taiwan has made extensive use of multilateral mechanisms such as the Emergency Preparedness Working Group (EPWG), founded in 2005 by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Li has been elected co-chair of the APEC working group, for which NCDR is the point of contact in Taiwan, three times since 2012. He explained its relevance to the organization’s overall goals by saying that APEC sees human security as essential to regional economic development. “The NCDR has actively supported the EPWG from its very beginning by facilitating interactions among member economies,” he said.

In a similar vein, the Global Coopera­tion and Training Framework (GCTF) was established by Taiwan and the United States in 2015. “The GCTF is a unique platform that introduces our strengths in disaster preparedness, among other fields, to the world and highlights our value in fostering contingency discussions,” Li noted. The most recent GCTF workshop on disaster prevention took place in June and focused on public-private partnership in building resilience. The event attracted over 150 attendees from 34 countries to Taipei City and included a visit to NCDR. The keynote speaker was Mami Mizutori, formerly the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction.

Network Response
As other countries learn about Taiwan’s work to improve disaster resilience through multilateral exchanges, bilateral partnerships also grow. Soon after the National Fire Agency opened a training center in Nantou County to train domestic disaster personnel in 2010, the facility also began to welcome those from countries including Mexico, Vietnam and the Philippines. Already the largest of its kind in Asia in terms of area and capacity, the center is now capable of accommodating 300,000 trainees a year after a major renovation and expansion completed in June.

In 2018 the NCDR launched projects to enhance disaster preparedness in Palau and eight countries in South and Southeast Asia, including Thailand. By the end of this year, 142 systems for monitoring seismic activity or rainfall in partner countries including India and Indonesia will have been established. The NCDR also organizes meetings and training sessions to share its disaster control experience and post-impact action with partnering countries. Separately, NCDR hosts the annual International Training Workshop to cultivate expertise and conduct exchanges with personnel from around the world. Since 2005 the series has helped 685 academics, government officials and researchers from 45 countries advance skills through themed workshops.

Taiwan works in close cooperation with Japan, as the two countries are both situated in the Circum-Pacific seismic zone and share circulation of the same weather systems, especially tropical depressions and typhoons. In 2010 the NCDR and the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University agreed to cooperate on disaster risk reduction through sharing research and holding regular workshops. More recently the NCDR renewed a 2020 pact with the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience in Ibaraki prefecture to conduct reciprocal personnel training and host seminars. The institutions formed joint investigative teams in 2024 to visit Noto Peninsula in western Japan and Hualien County in eastern Taiwan soon after the two regions were hit by earthquakes in January and April, respectively. Researchers worked together to complete reports analyzing the impacts of both quakes as references to enhance future resilience.

Precipitating Action
As NCDR creates opportunities for Taiwan to work with the world in contingency planning and risk reduction, Taiwan’s foremost foreign aid organization, the Taipei City-based International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF), also works to reduce the damage caused by extreme weather events and other disasters. It commissioned a team of experts from the Center for Weather and Climate Disaster Research based at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei to help design and implement risk reduction projects in Taiwan’s Central American allies. Ho Hao-che(何昊哲), associate professor of civil engineering at NTU, is in charge of the Belize and Guatemala projects.

The first steps against heavy inundation were taken in Belize in 2019 with the installation of a flood warning system in the towns of San Ignacio and Santa Elena on the upstream reaches of the Belize River. “Engineering measures such as building embankments, drainage ditches and detention and retention ponds are costly and can’t always cope with increasingly extreme weather, so we mainly rely on other measures to prevent flooding,” Ho explained. When Hurricane Eta resulted in heavy precipitation in November 2020, residents were able to evacuate in time due to notifications from a network of sensors that detected water levels and flow rates in the river, as well as temperatures and humidity in the air. “In addition to the warning system, we also worked with local colleagues and residents to prepare a standard operating procedure for flood response, which included identifying the best evacuation routes and emergency shelters,” Ho said. The NTU team also helped provide training for rapid response personnel and worked to raise local awareness of risks by encouraging information exchange between government agencies.

The project was welcomed by the Belizean government, which extended it to other major towns in the Belize River basin in 2022. The next year TaiwanICDF launched a similar endeavor in neighboring Guatemala to improve flood and landslide preparedness in San Pedro Carcha and Coban. Ho noted that both the scaled-up Belize project and the Guatemala project have integrated drone flight training sessions which have given over 100 participants, mostly from government agencies, the skills needed to utilize the high tech tools. He added that Taiwan, prone to natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes and landslides, has had ample opportunity to test and optimize its competitive information and communication technologies in disaster response. “As our ability to respond has matured, it’s gratifying to help save lives and livelihoods beyond our borders.”