Vice President Kim Jong-hae of K-water.

(Photo: K-water)

"In the U.S. and Europe, you can often come across the catchphrases ’Living with Floods,’ which means that people literally live with floods, not just as the recognition of the natural event, but the co-existence of humans and floods,” said Vice President Kim Jong-hae of the Water Resource Division of K-water. The natural phenomenon of flooding occurs everywhere in the world often, giving validity to the voices that call for the recognition of flooding as part of life.

The background of the change is global climate change. According to the IPCC report in 2007 on climate change, the average temperature of the earth rose 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.

The rise in temperature is accompanied by super-sized typhoons, serious drought, and other strange weather conditions. In 2012, the average temperature of the earth was the 10th highest since temperatures began to be measured in 1880, bringing severe cold and heavy snows, further reduced rains in regions with not enough water, and excessive rains in regions that usually have heavy rains, clearly showing the extreme weather conditions on the planet.

Korea was no exception. Last year, rainfalls became heavy in July after a lengthy dry spell in early summer as three large typhoons swept the peninsula in succession bringing heavy rains. Typhoon Sanba, in particular, which made landfall on the southern coast and cut through Gyeongsang provinces brought torrential downpours in a short period, said the K-water vice president.

In such weather conditions, flooding is no longer an odd weather condition, but a reality. The names of the large storms that struck Korea, like Lusa, Mamy, Ewenia, Muipa, and Sanba, are no longer strange to Koreans. More surprising is the fact that those typhoons swept through Korea only in the 2000s. Unless the country is prepared for such disastrous climate conditions, the result of the damage will be turned over to the next generations, Kim said.

K-water has been at work to come up with measures both structural and non-structural to guard the land from all kinds of weather conditions common to Korea, including floods and others.

First, downstream areas of dams must be cleared and the existing streams must be expanded so that water can flow easily in times of flood. When those water bowls are completed, they can contain more floodwater, making Korea safe from floods through water control with many large dams and clear streams in downstream areas. 

K-water has also been securing water control technologies, undergoing training, and performing surveys in diverse ways to fight floods. First of all, K-water has developed K-HIT, a technology system to control floods by correctly forecasting them, one of its seven systems covering five areas. Under the PFS system, K-water has been able to forecast the amounts of rainfall in areas where dams and weirs are located and come up with the best control systems or ways under RHDAPS to monitor the amounts of rainfall in those areas.

K-water’s water control situation office has been monitoring the rainfall around all dams 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, using those systems to forecast rainfall and floods.

Since February, K-water has built a relaying system after surveying the obstacles in the operations of dams and weirs in the country in cooperation with other related organizations and, at the same time, twice conducted large simulation training. The company also provided training on four occasions for the operators of dams and weirs to improve the ability to correctly forecast rainfall and floods.

K-water is ready as ever to deal with floods with advanced technologies for water control to make this a year without flood damage, although weather forecasts for this year said temperatures would be higher than normal with heavy rains and around two typhoons visiting the country.