The Executive Yuan on Tuesday initiated a NT$1 billion (US$33.69 million) program to boost natural disaster resilience in response to extreme weather events and earthquakes, Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) approved the program’s launch, Lo said in statement following a Cabinet meeting on disaster management.
Taiwan is in an earthquake hot spot and reports an average of 40,000 quakes a year, making the promotion of earthquake awareness among the public an important duty for the government, Su was quoted as saying.
Photo: CNA
A previous disaster prevention and response improvement plan would be continued in the new program, which aims to build weather event and earthquake resilience via interagency and government-civil society collaboration, Su said.
The Ministry of the Interior is to include the quality of work in disaster prevention as part of its performance evaluation for government offices, he said.
Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather events, such as flooding in South Africa in April, hailstorms in Germany and France this month, and ongoing wildfires in California, he added.
A hailstorm and gales that measured 9 on the Beaufort scale in Taipei on Friday last week are linked to the rise in extreme weather events around the world due to climate change, Su said.
Taiwan’s flood alert zones must be adjusted in anticipation of suddenly occurring and high-volume rainfall, while disaster surveillance and warning systems must be enhanced, he said.
The Cabinet has since 2019 allocated NT$6 billion to projects dealing with weather-related disasters, including efforts to create a weather data infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted flood prevention system, Su said.
The Taiwan Railways Administration is to install mudslide detection and warning systems on slopes as Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp has done, with help from the Public Construction Commission if necessary, he said.
An alert message system for torrential rain is being tested in high-risk areas such as Taipei’s Shuangxi District (雙溪), and New Taipei City’s Hubaotan (虎豹潭) and Dabao River (大豹溪), he added.
Su applauded the creation in February of an integrated platform to coordinate search-and-rescue-related services, including the National Airborne Service Corps, the Civil Aeronautics Administration, the coast guard and the armed forces, he said.
The ministry is mulling a plan to create an AI-assisted search-and-rescue dispatch system, Su said, urging agencies in charge of related efforts to make use of advances in technology.
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