IAHR-APD 2020 hosted by Hokkaido University

The 22nd Congress of International Association for Hydro Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR) Asia Pacific Division (APD) was held on September 14th and 15th 2020, hosted by the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) and its Chairman Professor Yasuyuki Shimizu of Hokkaido University’s Faculty of Engineering. The congress was originally intended to be held in Sapporo City of Hokkaido, Japan. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that had impeded large-scale meeting and long-distance travel for many, the entire event was conducted online, except for the opening ceremony that was held both online and offline. It was the first web-based event for IAHR. 

As a leading world organization in hydro-environmental sciences, IAHR hosts annual international meeting to promote research and its application by introducing novel initiatives from academia across countries. In addition to the seminars, participants also profit from courses and trainings offered by the organizing team. The Sapporo event in 2020 is specifically arranged by IAHR’s Asia Pacific Division, being the second IAHR international meeting ever held in Japan.

“This year’s event has been planned for four years, starting from our 2016 meeting in Sri Lanka. But looking at the situation at hand, after a series of long and serious discussions within the committee, in May we decided to turn the event into a web-based congress. Within a short period, we pushed ourselves to the limit to reorganize everything we had prepared,” said Professor Shimizu in an interview.

Over 500 abstracts from 27 countries were received for presentation in accordance to this year’s theme: Creating Resilience to Water Related Challenges. The submission was eventually narrowed down to 80 poster presentations and 200 paper presentations. As the core activities of the entire congress, the paper presentations were held in parallel, divided into different online rooms according to the specific subjects where participants were allowed to enter or leave the room freely. These presentations were preluded by an opening ceremony and series of keynote presentations from experts residing in different parts of the world, attended by over 300 participants.

On-site opening ceremony attended by around 50 people in the Conference Room of Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University (Photo: IAHR-APD 2020).

The Local Organizing Committee (LOC) were compelled to do some alterations to activities that were initially designed for direct interaction. For instance, a field trip to Toyohira River of Sapporo was included in the original plan to provide direct learning experience, but as the situation forbade, the LOC instead took the initiatives to provide online video technical tour of more than one Hokkaido rivers that are accessible through the official website.

“Since the real technical tours usually take more time and resources to realize, this type of video-based tour is easy to handle. But nothing beats on-site, first-person learning experience. We are also missing the chance to network with fellow researchers and consulting companies,” remarked Professor Shimizu. 

The closing ceremony concluded the congress and awards for the best papers were announced. Prior to the event, IAHR also had handed Regional Hydro-Environment Heritage Awards to three regional organizations in Japan for their contribution in sustainable water-related facilities preservation and control.

Representing the Hokkaido Government, vice-governor of Hokkaido, Mr. Motohito Uramoto (middle), receives the 2020 The IAHR Regional Hydro-Environment Heritage Award from IAHR-APD 2020 LOC members: Prof. Hideto Kon (left) and Prof. Yasuyuki Shimizu (right) (Photo: IAHR-APD 2020).

Despite the sudden challenges and limitations, IAHR-APD 2020 received positive acknowledgements and appraisals for being able to amass world-wide participants of the same interest and therefore still created a meaningful interaction among researchers, industries, and communities. Announced at the end of the event, the next IAHR-APD congress will be held in 2022 in Chennai, India.

Click here to visit IAHR-APD 2020 official website.

Written by Aprilia Agatha Gunawan