Fri, Jun 23, 2017 page8

• Details needed on aquatic development

  • By Liu Yu-wen 劉玉雯
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  There have been many comments on the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program that the government has been eagerly promoting. The program includes the development of aquatic environments, and suggestions have been made about reforms relating to water resource conservation, flood prevention and safety problems in view of the frequent and heavy rainfall during the plum rain and typhoon seasons.

  First, if cities are to be built in a way that eradicates floods, ditches must be dug like battle trenches and regional drainage dikes must be built up to a height at which they block any view of the waterways. This will take us even further away from the aim of making aquatic areas accessible. Therefore, compromises have always been found in water control construction. Advanced nations also have complementary insurance systems that provide additional safeguards for areas that cannot be protected by building high dikes. This is something that Taiwan could consider doing.

  Second, the construction of major cities in the world has relied on bodies of water. The beautification of aquatic environments is the most important way to revive urban environments. Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon and Kaohsiung’s Love River (愛河) are two well-known examples. Although remediation of the Tamsui River (淡水河) has been somewhat successful, the high walls that are supposed to prevent the kind of flood that occurs only once in 200 years also prevent the public from seeing improvements that have been made to the aquatic environment.

  When the central government uses available funds to help local authorities beautify their aquatic environments, everyone should keep their eyes open to monitor the budgets and see whether they are appropriate or wasteful. They can then make more aquatic environments accessible, simultaneously improving urban beautification and forging emotional links with the public.

  Third, even though Taiwan has a lot of problems with silting, the problem of inadequate and unevenly distributed water resources must not be taken lightly. Since the Meinong Reservoir (美濃水庫) development project was terminated, there have hardly been any new reservoir construction plans, and when Typhoon Morakot struck in 2009, it caused Chiayi County’s Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) to lose nearly 100 million tonnes of capacity. Apart from developing diverse water resources, it is also desirable for industry, government and academia to combine their strengths to solve the problem of silting in reservoirs.

  Fourth, the trend toward Industry 4.0 has been on the rise worldwide. The technological basis for Industry 4.0 is using cyberphysical systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) to build a new kind of smart industrial world that has perception and consciousness, and allows instant precision manufacturing and transfer of existing resources to achieve the aim of supply-side optimization. The development of aquatic environments and conservation of water resources should also adopt and integrate advanced technologies, such as information and communication technology, IoT and big data when confronting the challenges of climate change and extreme weather to create a comprehensive and intelligent water resource management system.

  The development of aquatic environments is a nationally integrated infrastructure plan that is worth promoting, and it should involve new concepts on intelligent management. Government agencies must present project details that meet the public’s expectations to draw support for this plan, and they should call upon everyone to contribute to its oversight. Only then can it fully achieve the desired effect.

  Liu Yu-wen is a professor at National Chiayi University.

  Translated by Julian Clegg
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