On October 18, 2019, Professor Slobodan P. Simonovic, Chairperson of the International Conference on Flood Management (ICFM), fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering, Professor Emeritus of the Western University of Canada, visited IWHR, discussing on issues of bilateral cooperation deepening, work of ICFM permanent secretariat supported by IWHR as well as the collaboration between IWHR and the Jaroslav ?erni Institute for Water Resources Development of Serbia.
IWHR President KUANG Shangfu welcomed Prof. Simonovic at IWHR headquarters. As he reviewing the exchanges between Prof. Simononic and IWHR in the past over 10 years, KUANG expressed his sincere thanks to Prof. Simonovic for his great academic contribution to the flood management and disaster mitigation research of IWHR. KUANG also mentioned that, with the strong support of the Prof. Simonovic, the permanent secretariat of ICFM has been providing an important platform for the exchanges between China and the international community in the field of flood control and disaster mitigation. At the same time, IWHR has been giving its full support to ICFM permanent secretariat in terms of manpower, material and financial resources, etc. Fruitful achievements have been made by the secretariat including the ICFM website construction and operation, historical ICFM data and proceedings collection and compilation, the preparation of the 8th conference, series of academic activities organized and so on.
Dr. KUANG also expressed his gratitude to Prof. Simonovic for being the go-between of the cooperative relationship of IWHR and the Jaroslav ?erni Water Institute of Serbia, which is the first employer of Prof. Simonovic.
Prof. Simonovic expressed his sincere appreciation to IWHR for the continued support to ICFM. As for the future work of the ICFM permanent secretariat, he proposed that after a two-year start-up stage, the focus of the secretariat could be shifted from information sharing to training and public education providing. He also suggested integrating the work of ICFM into the wider international network through online seminars, publishing expert reports and other means. He also briefed the preparations of the 8th conference in 2020 and gave advices on the cooperation between IWHR and Jaroslav ?erni Water Institute.
Further discussions were then made on strengthening international cooperation in disaster prevention and reduction, contributing China's good practices to the world to jointly cope with global water disasters and challenges.
