National land-use planning can be carried out more effectively by adopting advanced technologies, National Science Council (NSC) Chairman Wu Maw-kuen (
In the wake of devastating floods from last week's Typhoon Mindulle, researchers said the time has come to review existing land use policies. At a convocation meeting organized by Academia Sinica yesterday, Wu said that the adoption of high-tech tools could help Taiwan implement strategies to use land wisely.
Wu said that the time scale for scientific forecasting could be extended to 200 years or even 500 years from the current outer limit of several decades.
Taking ROCSAT-2, the nation's second satellite, as an example, Wu said that remote sensing technologies enabled officials to take highly detailed pictures of affected areas.
"After our next satellite, ROCSAT-3, is launched, further data useful to weather forecasting will be collected," Wu said.
Wu said much damage from natural disasters could be avoided if risk assessment of building and public works projects was done carefully.
"For example, we built many detention ponds, reservoirs and facilities to drain water from low-lying land inside Tainan Science Park. It remained unaffected even after torrential rains recently," Wu said.
Wu suggested that development is a factor leading to environmental deterioration. He said his hometown in Yuli, Hualien County, was one of undeveloped villages at high altitudes. During the typhoon, no serious damage was reported despite abnormal rainfall.
Chen Yueh-fong (
"We have to know which damaged areas can no longer be restored, so people should avoid living there anymore," Chen said.
Chen said that affected areas remained vulnerable to damage from heavy rains and that people should be prepared to face similar tragedies in the future.
As of yesterday, the storm's death toll had reached 26 fatalities, and Council of Agriculture statistics showed that typhoon-related losses of agricultural crops and facilities had reached NT$4.23 billion.
To prevent the spread of disease in disaster areas, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) ordered its local bureaus to clean up storm debris as soon as possible. As of yesterday the EPA's local environmental bureaus in disaster areas had collected 21,000 tonnes of household waste and 24,000 tones of sludge.
According to the Central Weather Bureau yesterday, heavy rains are still possible today in northern Taiwan. The bureau has faced criticism for its failure to predict rainfall precisely in different parts of the island.
Yeh Tien-chiang (
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching