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Evaluating the Cost of Flood Damage Based on Changes in Extreme Rainfall in Japan

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Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for Climate Change

Abstract

The fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provoked a significant amount of controversy, as experts have sought to apply it to climate change in Japan. In particular, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Tourism (MLIT) organized a committee of experts responsible for implementing flood control policies (MLIT 2008). Japan is particularly vulnerable to flooding because of its steep geography and humid climate characterized by typhoons. Consequently, Japan has been coping with the problem of flood control for a long time (Takahasi and Uitto 2004). The number of floods, and, hence, the damage due to flooding, has increased since 2004. Even though these flood events may not be caused directly by climate change, many researchers are interested in the various problems of climate change and its broader implications for economic development.

Reprinted with permission of Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science from So Kazama et al., Sustain. Sci. 4(2009) 61–69. DOI 10.1007/s11625-008-0064-y

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Global Environment Research Fund (S-4) of the Ministry of Environment, Japan. We would like to thank Professor Nobuo Mimura, Professor Kazuya Yasuhara, and Dr. Hiromune Yokoki of Ibaraki University for their valuable comments on adaptations. In addition, we are grateful to Mr. Soichiro Machida for his inundation modeling program, which he created while he was a graduate student at Tohoku University. Finally, we would also like to express special thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on improving the quality of the paper.

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Correspondence to So Kazama .

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Kazama, S., Sato, A., Kawagoe, S. (2010). Evaluating the Cost of Flood Damage Based on Changes in Extreme Rainfall in Japan. In: Sumi, A., Fukushi, K., Hiramatsu, A. (eds) Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies for Climate Change. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-99798-6_1

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