 Good afternoon all from Asia, Southeast Asia, and welcome to this webinar. Good morning all those from coming from Europe. We have the webinar on COVID and floods, and specifically in Southeast Asia. And I will talk you through the program. There are still people coming in. So my name is Chris Sevenberg and I am moderating this webinar today and I'm of IHC. And Dr. Abraham Abischek, he is helping us. He's a co-organizer and for all the technicalities he will support us. So very happy that you are with us, Abraham. Thanks for all the good work you did so far. The program of today is that I will start with a very short introduction on setting the scene. Why do we have this webinar? What do we want to get out of it? And then I want to introduce the program. We have three rounds and we will interact with the participants. In each round, I will tell you in a minute what that means. And then hopefully we will arrive at recommendations. What will be our next step? What do we want together? What do we recommend as a next step related to the issue of COVID and floods? Now setting the scene has COVID compounded the risk to the people affected by floods. That's the principal question we would like to address. Now flooding affects their lives and livelihoods and socioeconomic activities of millions of people every year and displaces them from their communities and social cultural settings. During extreme flood events, people are forced to move to shelters where they have to share space and resources in close contact with many people. Such congregations may considerably increase the risk of the spread of the virus unless appropriate physical distances and health safety measures are ensured at the shelters. To combat the spread of the virus, more than a third of the global population is currently in a lockdown. And today I read in a newspaper that more than 300 million children do not go to school. So the lockdown has already severely damaged the livelihoods and socioeconomic activities of communities affected by the dual disaster. And it's important to learn how the combined direct impacts are affecting the vulnerable communities and how they can cope with the evolving situation. Now it's good to mention that in May 29 this year the high level experts and leaders panel on water and disasters help has called for immediate use of 10 principles referred to as the principles in countries, cities and hospitals to better manage the critical challenge of COVID. Now these principles promote actions to raise awareness, ensure coordination and collaboration and monitoring progress and take effective measures aimed at addressing the issues of water and disasters. But there is more apart from the immediate actions on the longer term the pandemic crisis will exacerbate the unfolding economic crisis in ways which will put specific population groups at a higher risk and compromise recovery. And that is also why there is a plea for a long term strategy for pandemic preparedness and there's a nature paper and I will share with you for those who have not received that. I will share the paper which make that plea for the long term strategy for pandemic preparedness. So the question is, is COVID teaching us new lessons? And what are these lessons in flood disaster management? Now that is at the heart of this webinar. Now we are happy that we have four speakers from the flood management domain, but also from the health domain. And the first speaker is Professor Odja of the Department of Civil Engineering, the Indian Institute of Technology, Rurki, India. Welcome Professor Odja, we are happy that you are here. Then we have Professor Kwon, he's the director of the Institute for Circular Economy and Development in Vietnam, the Vietnam National University. Then we have Dr Tran Nghe, Institute for Global Health Innovations of the Daitan University. Very welcome, Dr Tran, we have seen your publications on this topic. So you are really from the health domain. So happy to have you here. And then we have Professor Shahran Khan of the Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, BUET from Bangladesh. So the program is built around three rounds, and each round has a question at the heart. And the first round is about the question, do we observe a compound risk in our country? So what we would like to have from your, is from your country, your observations, your findings with regard to the compound risk. And then the second round will be about, okay, what are the lessons to be drawn? What can we learn from the different countries? What do we see? What has worked well? What has worked less effectively? And then in the third round, we would like to arrive at actions. What is required? What are the recommendations we want to convey? And who should do what? And preferably, what can we do? What do we want to do as a community, as a network of scientists and people working in the field? What do we want as a next step? Now the program starts with round one. And I will give the floor to the speakers. In the order I presented them. So first Professor Odja, then Dr. Haid, then Professor Kwan, and then Professor Shahlam. And it is about the first question. And during this round, there will be the possibility for the audience to engage in a poll. They were prompted to engage in a poll and to give their vote. And the results will be shown on the screen as well. So the speakers, they can use that information in their presentation if they want, and they can maybe give some feedback to the audience related to the outcome of the poll. Now the second round, we have the same. Again, the four speakers. Again, a poll and the same holds for the third round. Then in the plenary discussion, we have still two questions for the audience. One open question and one in the format of a poll. And there we would like to open the discussion to the audience and that the audience can directly ask questions to the presenters. And hopefully we will have a vivid discussion. And the last part, there will be a wrap up done by me, where I try to capture the findings and hope to arrive at recommendations. So that is in short program. It will start at nine o'clock and will end at 11 o'clock. There are a few practicalities to mention. It will be recorded and it can be found on the website of the announcement. So there you can have a look at the recordings. There is also on the website what will make available some documents for further reading. And one of the documents is that nature paper, which I refer to, which is more on the longer term perspectives and need to develop a strategy, a pandemic preparedness strategy. And there's a small paper from Professor Shalaam Khan and myself and a few others, which is setting the scene about this topic today. And that is also available for you. So you can visit the website and download that information. Now, I would like to invite now Professor Orja to to kick off the first round and by addressing the question, do we observe a compound risk in our country and you have maximum five minutes for this. Professor Orja, the floor is yours. Let me share the screen. Yes, good morning and good afternoon to my friends in Europe and good morning. Maybe good afternoon to friends in South Asia and good morning to colleagues in Europe. I think the screen is visible now Chris. Yes. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, recently the state of, you know, Telangana in India was in the news in the sense that the Hyderabad flood victims just positive for COVID in relief camps. So this was a big news. And I just put some photographs highlighting what were the state of affairs in the state, and you can see that in a, in such a crisis, really what is happening, how people are being taken from one place to other. So the picture reveals so many things. And then we really looked into what happened to the new COVID cases. And this is the flood period. So you can see that this is the pattern we observed in this case. And another representation. So the same thing here, where we are looking into what are the cases till now, and how the testing increased with time. Another picture from the state of Bihar is here to manifest again the same things that what kind of life one has in the conditions of flood. And you see the picture reveals so many things. And again, if you see this diagram that what is happening really after the flood period, you can see the increase in COVID cases in the state of Bihar. So some link is certainly appears here that how this flood condition is leading to increase in the cases. Again, some different results related to increase in testing and increase in cases. And again, a scenario from another state Assam, where we have very high rainfall, and the impact of this can be seen from this one. And see, this is the condition during the flood period, and what kind of life one can imagine. And if you really look into the number of cases during the flood period, again, you can see that the number of cases are increasing. Again, results supporting, you know, that what is the number of testing done and how the cases are there. But despite all this, this is the scenario from the Uttar Pradesh, one of the most populous state in the country. And this is the scenario from Varanasi, one of the popular place in the country. And so really what is happening. Again, you can see that during flood period, there is, you know, increase in such cases. So the compounding effect is certainly being, you know, held from these figures. Considering the limitation of time, I'll just take you to this particular slide which shows the classification of different states in terms of the precipitation occurrences and different categories are listed here. M stands for normal and E stands for the extreme case. And D is for the deficit rainfall conditions. And, you know, so these classifications are given by NDBI. So what we tried to do till yesterday, we just plotted a, you know, figure from October 1 to December 7. And this is what we observed for different states. So this is the picture. So here you have the rainfall on the x-axis and y-axis, you have the number of COVID cases and different states are listed here. So these are the states where the precipitation is in large deficit. So this we processed till yesterday. And then we go to the next category where you can see that these are the COVID cases in the states which are in the deficit category. So this is the classification which we have done. And you can see that perhaps a very simple, you know, relationship between the number of COVID cases and precipitation status is not being reflected here. This is the case with the normal one. So they are the states under the normal precipitation category. But if you can just see these two lines here and one line building up here. So maybe, but what was interesting to us when we looked into the states which are having existing fall which are really ideal for leading to the flood condition. So you can see this island in close to Chennai and that's in sea. But except this one, if you see the states where, you know, which are in the excess precipitation zone in the country. Even in this period also, there is a clear cut linkage, you know, between the number of COVID cases and the amount of the precipitation. So this is certainly showing that there is certainly some effect in terms of the precipitation events which are taking place and the number of COVID cases. So this is the data which we gathered from IMD and the COVID data we got from COVID-19 site in India and clear cut this linkage is there. So I think considering the limitation of the time, I will just stop here and come back to my other slides, you know, in the next round. Will that be okay? Okay, that will be fine. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Ocha, very interesting results. I think this is really, really new stuff. This is the new stuff we did till yesterday. I thought, you know, let me do it before the press date. And certainly we got this very interesting result. Thank you very much, Dr. Ocha and Abraham. The poll is running now at the moment or not yet? Abraham, okay. Does that stop here, Chris? Okay, just appeared and we have about 35 participants though. So the participants are invited to join the poll. Okay. In the meantime, we will proceed and I would like to invite Dr. Hei, Tram Hei. Again, very much welcome. Do you want to use slides, Dr. Hei? The floor is yours. Dr. Hei, can you hear me? You are still on mute. You have to unmute yourself. What we see in the meantime, that there is a majority voting for a significant effect. But still there is 44% which votes for only marginally. So that is interesting. Dr. Tram, can you unmute yourself, please? Dr. Tram, if you click on the microphone button at the bottom of the screen. Take your time. Yeah, no worries. If you take the mouse pointer towards the bottom left corner of the screen, the unmute option will appear. In the meantime, we see that plenty, yes. No problem, Dr. Tram. Please. Sorry. The floor is yours. Do you hear me? Sorry. Yes, we can hear you. We can hear you well. Because I also don't reverse the PBT. I think Professor Hong will present. Maybe you can help me to solve the problem, right? Yeah, take your time. Take your time. No problem. In the meantime, we see that 55% believes there is a significant impact and 45% of the 20 participants voted for a marginally impact. So let's see whether we can influence this vote during this webinar. You managed to share the screen, Dr. Tram. Sorry, I will say later. Okay. Maybe we can move to Professor Shah Alam first and then come back to you later. Is that a good idea? Yes. Okay, Professor Shah Alam, could you take the floor please? Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chris. And also thanks for inviting me to this very interesting webinar. We have been talking about this for a while. You mentioned the paper we wrote together with our Myanmar colleagues earlier to see the flood risks. And at that time we just had a cyclone in Bangladesh. You may remember Cyclone Amphan in the Bangladesh coast at that time and we were afraid that people will be moved to the shelter and safe distancing could not be maintained. So that was the case at that time. And in terms of risks from the natural disasters that was a major event at that time and a lot of actions were taken so that safe distancing could be maintained in the shelters. Despite that we saw in the news that it was obvious that safe distancing could not be maintained in the shelters. And that was the result in fact. However, before I go into the compounding effects of the compounding risks from different aspects, I would like to draw your attention particularly to the Bangladesh case of the COVID case. In March 2000, earlier this year, there was a paper which forecast the COVID effects in Bangladesh. And in that paper, based on modeling, it was projected that a lot of people will die. And there will be dead bodies on the street and no one will be there to bury them. There will be long queues in the graveyards, things like that. So that was a very bleak picture at that moment and a lot of people were scared. It was probably true in other parts of the world and at that time we just started to see the effects in Europe, particularly Italy and Spain, how COVID has hit at that moment. So people were really scared in Bangladesh. Fortunately, that did not happen in Bangladesh. And this is also a paradox why it did not happen and public health specialists and experts have explanations. But probably that is not the topic of these webinars. So I'm not going into those details. But that did not happen in Bangladesh. The infections kept really low, surprisingly low. And we did not see the long queues in the graveyards or the hospitals or the clinics were not over burdened by that much. And the infections or cases stayed concentrated mostly in the urban areas, not so much in the rural areas. Even if we recognize that cases were under reported and there were many cases that were not reported as COVID cases. But we did not see in the media or reporting by the journalists that the cases were that many or the deaths were that many. So these two numbers, the number of cases and number of deaths were really surprisingly low compared to the projections by the model projections by the public health professionals and experts. They were surprisingly low and they still are low. There were people were afraid that the slums in the urban areas will be hit hard. And that did not happen either. So poor people who has to have to go outside for their daily earning or daily living. They currently as the rich people's disease of it. So they, they think that it is too much to be afraid of. And they think that these are our similar kind of cases or viruses the face almost every day on a daily basis. So this is the behavioral aspect and reality. So I said this only as a background that in the rural areas and slums and among people low people living on low income or daily income. They do not care much about this. So that is the reality in Bangladesh and in effect when they see that these effects are actually not really visible to them. They they they have become immune to it immune to it in a sense that they're not afraid of this they are they are scared, but not to that extent. So that is the case and this has effect on their responses to public warning because they're not really maintaining safe distancing. They're not wearing masks and you can see that the usual traffic jam on the streets of Thakkar back. So people are getting out and we are seeing traffic jam. So in the cities, we see the rise of cases, but not to that extent. So if you go back to the compounding risk, and we had this flood risks we had risks before COVID to floods to fluvial floods to urban floods to storm surge flooding and other natural disasters and how has COVID compounded that risk. I would say in Bangladesh, not significant, not significantly in a sense that risk. If we take this as a perception of the people, they don't perceive the compounding effects of COVID to this risk as significant because they do not respond in that way. So this is for a perception point of view. And I do not know of any study that has been done to which has actually assessed the risks from a public perception point of view. So it is there. I mean, obviously, if people gather in a mass scale in closed spaces like the shelters or in times of disaster, they have to keep coming close contact with each other. And that has obvious consequences to the rise in the number of cases. So that is very obvious. But how significant is that in Bangladesh, we have not yet seen that compounding effects on the risks to be significant. I separate effect than risks. Effect is the visible or the obvious result. And the risk I see that how people perceive it as a risk. So these are the two. Okay. Thank you very much, Shalaam. That was a very clear and interesting findings from from your perspective on Bangladesh. I see, by the way, that 23 participants has voted. And still the majority is conceiving this as a serious risk. But 43% is telling it's not really very significant. We aligns a bit with what Professor Shalaam just just mentioned. And let's move back to Dr. Trun. Dr. Trun, are you ready for your presentation? Can you give your view on the Vietnam situation? Dr. Trun, if you have found your presentation and are having problems sharing it through your Zoom, you could email it to me and I could share it from here for you. If you can hear me, that's an idea. And maybe we can move to Dr. Kwan. Professor Kwan, could you give already your impression? I know you are in the car driving. I hope you have found a safe place to park. But can you give your perception on the situation in Vietnam? And then later on we will come back to Dr. Trun. Dr. Kwan, you have to unmute yourself. Yes. Thank you very much, Chris. Good morning, good afternoon everyone from Europe and other southern Asian countries. It's Kwan from Vietnam National University. So first my very great pleasure to join the webinar today. And now back to the question, I think maybe Dr. Trun can give more detail on the COVID-19. But first I would like to give maybe a source or brief about the current setting of disaster risks related to climate risks. First in Vietnam in 2020. So actually to this year is quite a very challenging year in Vietnam. Firstly, in early year we have extreme drought, especially in southern Vietnam may come down. We have one of extreme drought and saline intrusions in early year in early this year. Then in the outcast October this year we have extreme rainfall, especially by the typhoons in the middle of Vietnam. Where we have the rainfall, daily rainfall go up to from 400 to 600 millimeters per day. And then but it's not only one time but it's like flood over flood. So it's several times and it's cause in the middle of Vietnam is extremely flooding in August, October this year. And also at the regular flooding issue in many cities in southern Vietnam, especially like Ho Chi Minh City or Cân Sơn. We have a Cân Bảo flood but just Cân Bảo flood which is caused by both high tide and also extreme rainfall which is normally go up to 150 to 100 millimeters per event. So it's causing flood. So this year in term of climate risk, we have both drought and flood this year in Vietnam. And then go to the COVID-19. So we have actually in two to three so far, more or less three wave of the COVID-19. The first one was in May where we have maximum around 20 cases in April, May. And then we control it and then it's come back again the second wave in July, August where we have maximum 80 cases in Vietnam. And then more or less the last wave, no not the third wave which is just about almost 10 days ago where we observe for about maximum 20 cases. But he encountered both community cases but also from international immigration. So basically in Vietnam we are I think happy to share with you that we are one of the top countries controlling the COVID-19 quite well in the world. So we have a bit of a casualty, especially in the second wave we have up to 30 people died but others too. And then it's more or less going down and then quite controlled in Vietnam. So again now back to the combined or combined climate crisis and then COVID-19 I think we don't really have a short problem in Vietnam. So I think this was so lucky, maybe a bit, of course we had to do a lot of, we have a lot of effort about this. But for example, the second wave in July where we don't have yet, the second wave was in Vietnam, but it was before the floods come. So it's not happening at the same time. So after the COVID the second wave in July we control quite well and then we don't have any cases. And then in September, October the floods come and at that time we have no community cases in Vietnam at that time. So basically we don't have really combined climate crisis and pandemic risk. Wonderful, thank you Kwan, that was a very clear and positive message. So happy to hear that. Maybe Dr Trun, are you able to present and did Abraham receive the presentation, Abraham? No, I haven't yet. Okay, Dr Trun, can you give it a try? Maybe without PowerPoint. Dr Trun, can you hear us? Okay, I suggest that we move on to the second question and the second question is about, and I will go back to the PowerPoint. What are the lessons to be drawn and again the audience is requested to fill out the poll. And the first round we close off and we see that the majority is in the perception that it has a significant impact, although the 46% voted for marginally impact. We will now move on to the second question and the second question is about what are the lessons, what we can learn from our experience. And I would like to give the floor to Professor Otja again. Professor Otja, I will stop sharing this screen. You have the floor now to answer this question and again there will be a poll for the audience to vote. So Professor Otja, please take the floor. Thank you, Chris. I think this flooding has become a regular feature in India. And, you know, last year we also had serious floods in Bangalore and prior to that in Chennai and in Kerala floods, the regions where the flood was not expected to be very severe are also experiencing the threat of flood. And the reason is the way the land is being enclosed, right? So the increase of flood plain and the water bodies is a very serious issue nowadays. And unless this is stopped by some means, the impervious surface, you know, if you have more impervious surface it will lead to more runoff and more floods. So certainly the watershed management has to be also looked into very carefully. And then nowadays we are also talking about, because we are building a network, a huge network of roads. So we are also looking into that. So if we use impervious roads again, this is certainly not going to be helpful because we will have more and more runoff. So the lot of work nowadays is also being emphasized on the use of previous payments, particularly in those regions. In rural roads, for example, you know, previous payments, you know, can be constructed and because these payments are able to, you know, handle less loaded vehicles. So this is also one of the important issues which is being considered in the country at this stage. Then we saw it from one of the pictures that where the floodwater reached the hospital. And, you know, so such conditions and, you know, have to be looked very carefully. And the drainage in the city has to be controlled very carefully because most of the drains in many of the cities are also, you know, not in a healthy state. And I will say that these are able to transport, they carry the water for which these were designed. So certainly one has to look that in the climate changing scenario when we are going to expect high intensity rainfalls and for this we are not prepared. So at the same time, we are going to increase the impervious surfaces and also the precipitation intensity is increasing in the different parts of the country. So under these two conditions, serious planning has to be done, you know, to look into what kind of surface not being generated, and if the existing drains are inefficient to carry that runoff, then adequate provisions have to be made. So these are all the lessons which you have learned. And I have few slides to show from, you know, some of the work which is being done earlier, but I think that I will discuss when I am going to talk about engineering interventions and how can we can solve these problems. So this is what I wanted to convey this. And Professor Ajay, you were referring to that when there is heavy rainfall and extreme weather events, you see some impacts on the number of COVID cases. That's right. So what type of lessons do you do you can you draw from this because it has certainly an impact. The lesson is lesson is that there is not the problem with the infrastructure. In fact, we should have done some sort of planning, you know, so that this floodwater does not reach the hospitals. So that that's the thing. I mean, whatever the hospitals are there, or maybe we should locate them at such places where such threats of floodwater are not there. Because clearly we have seen that the floodwater reaches the hospital. Certainly there was increase in the COVID cases to take care of this in the future. We had to see that wherever we locate our hospitals or relief camps or wherever such things are located. One has to make sure that this this flood, the flood zoning has to be, you know, looked into really and these spaces are these infrastructure should not fall in the flood zone. So that that's what that's what important lesson which has really come into, you know, our perception. Yeah. Okay, okay. Thank you, Professor. Shalaam, Professor Shalaam. Can you address this question? Yeah, I think the flood risk management interventions have been ongoing and it really go on. How do you manage the flood risks in urban areas in the rural areas in the flood plain? How do you handle cyclone and storm surge? Those questions were there already so and they'll go on and now today's question is how do we tackle the compounding risks or the compounding effects? How has this made a difference in our ongoing efforts or planning or interventions? That is probably the focus. I see the compounding effects mainly in primarily in two areas and you have already mentioned one of those that is education. It has affected education severely but more than that I think the livelihoods of the people mainly in the urban areas who live on daily earning. So their lives have been affected and this is the thing that people care the most. So the livelihoods, how their livelihoods have been affected in urban areas in rural areas and in areas where the COVID has more impact. So we see that the compounding effects are probably more visible in the urban areas where we already have seen urban flooding and the drainage infrastructure was not adequate to drain out the rainwater. So here we already had a risk from urban flooding and now due to COVID people cannot go out and for the daily living. So this has the most serious effect, compounding effect in the urban areas because of urban flooding. And the second one is in the rural areas if you think of the coastal areas where cyclones and storm surge have hit. There people had to go to the shelters and they had to stay in close proximity for about a day or so in the shelters. So these have more compounding effects. So these are the things that we learn from the events that we have seen so far. And like Professor Oja was saying, also access to healthcare facilities during these events or the disasters. The healthcare facilities were sometimes not readily accessible. So that means that during these events, these accesses were already unavailable but due to COVID, these accesses has become more inaccessible. So these are the compounding effects. So I mainly see the compounding effects in these three areas where people put more emphasis or they prioritize these areas. So Shailam, there are two questions, one from the audience and one from myself. One question is, do you expect that the economic impact of COVID in Bangladesh will also resonate in the way and investments made in flood risk management. So in that sense, does it have an indirect impact or do you expect that it will not really much affect it? And the second question is, what about wastewater treatment? Do you feel there is an area which is imported and needs to be improved as well? Okay, the first question is the economic impact. We are already seeing the economic impact, but it is hitting hard on the low income people. So we have seen a lot of people moving out of the cities because they have lost their livelihoods. So they cannot pay their rent from their earning. So not only the daily earning people but also low income people, they have moved out of the city. And they have gone back to their rural homestay. So the rural areas where they cannot, they can afford to live. But these are the people who are affected the most. So economically, this rate of the people who have lower level of income have been affected the most. But in terms of investment, there have been several packages from the government to help these people, how they can survive through this crisis. There have been national programs. So a lot of programs are actually been proposed in Bangladesh to help the people. How effective they are that I think we need to revisit whether they have been effective to help these people and to enhance their livelihoods or income. That is probably questionable. So in terms of investment, I see policies are being formulated to take this lesson. And for long term actions, that is probably a point of your third question, but I'll probably touch upon it very quickly. That in Bangladesh, the government is thinking of long term effects of such disease if we see this in the future in such a pandemic to this scale. So what should we do now to prepare for the future if we face another pandemic in the future? So what should be done? There are some thoughts, but probably it'll take more time to organize those thoughts and translate those two into action. Those discussions are there, but there are no concrete policies for long term investment to tackle such compounding effects in addition to what is already being done. In terms of wastewater treatment, I haven't heard of any initiative so far, at least in Bangladesh, whether that is a significant threat to Bangladesh. I do not see that as a threat yet. Okay. Thank you, Professor Alam. I see there is a question from the audience and that's particularly directed to the Vietnam situation. So maybe Dr. Kwan and Dr. Tran, you can reply to this question. The question is that this participant was thinking that it could have a positive effect on flood risk management because social distance limits the number of people pouring into the streets. Maybe Dr. Kwan or Dr. Tran, can you please give your view on that? How do you see that? Are there also positive effects associated with this? Yeah, I think I'm not sure if Dr. Chan can talk. I think he had a problem with his laptop and I think he could not really speak. Yeah, so I think I will take this opportunity to respond to the question. Yeah, so I think the positive is there. I agree with that. But also I just meant back to my first response because the COVID-19 and the flood actually concur was not at the same time. So for us, I think that is not really a big matter with that because the flood is not really happening in the whole country. Because especially the extreme flood in October, it was in the middle of Vietnam. So other places, yeah, it was the Vietnamese is why control, then there is no problem with that. So the linkage again is a little bit loose here in our case. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I see the quality was a bit poor of your connection. I didn't get it fully. But what I understand that you are substantiating this view of this question about there are positive effects also from COVID. I suggest that we move to the third question. And maybe we could ask Abram to present already the questions for this round to the audience. There are a few options they have to reply. Abram, can you present the poll for the audience? Yes. And the question is, of course, it's about what actions are required and by whom, what can we do about it? So we invite now the audience to vote and there are a few options, strengthening public health system, strengthening flood protection structures, early warning system, social protection measures and others. If you have some other suggestions outside the first four options, please feel free to detail upon them in the chat window. Thank you. And in the meantime, Professor Odia, could you give your view on what actions are required and who should do what from the Indian perspective? Okay, Chris. So I will just share my screen, you know, because I saw many comments related to wastewater treatment. So I had included and I anticipated that. So let me share the screen and Chris, are you able to see me? Not the presentation, not yet. Okay. Are you able to see now? It starts to come. Yes. Okay. Okay. That's great. Yeah. So I, you know, last time I continued up to this point and then this is the one work which we did on virus transport. And this was this work was done long back. But, you know, you can you can see here that we had this system in the river bed itself. You can see here two infiltration basins. And this was in the state of Gujarat, where we did this actual project. And we allowed the wastewater from the municipality, you know, to this infiltration basins. And this of course had the concentration of viruses. But after using this infiltration basins, then we again measured the concentration of the viruses in the, you know, production well from where the water was being found. And you can you can see from this one that there was a significant removal of this through this soil aqua treatment system. So this is the kind of work which we did long back. And if such type of engineering interventions can be done, I think we can, you know, particularly use this in the places where adequate wastewater treatment facilities are not available. So this is the kind of work which we did. And this can be certainly, you know, attempted in the rural areas in the country where we still don't have, you know, adequate wastewater treatment facility. Apart from this, this is the some work which we did. And this work could be really useful for the oxidation ponds which were having our rural areas. So this we looked this algae wastewater treatment. And certainly we found very increasing results. So these are some of the relevant slides. And what we observed in this case was that we looked into the removal of pathogens in algal reactors. So these are the techniques and you can you can see that how these algeas and pathogens are competing together. So this this could be useful we are looking into the oxidation ponds. And we also, you know, decided it's a sold up to which this statement should continue. So basically I had a certain time we observed, and we proposed it for a certain algal spacing. So this is the kind of work which we have been doing here. So certainly this is not only helpful to capture the nutrients which are coming into the wastewater through the algae and of course we can use this harvest this algae and use it, you know, as a fertilizer we can do all the technical But at the same time, you know, whatever the pathogens are entering into the oxidation pond, in such systems, we're also trying to get rid of that. So this is, this is the two things I thought will be relevant to this one. So this is the some kind of technical solutions I just wanted to talk about. Apart from this, yeah, apart from this, I think some of the points which I've already mentioned regarding what kind of efforts we have to put towards the flood management. And of course, you know, as far as India is concerned, again, the, the, the similar issues cropped in, there was migration of labor from, you know, all big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, because most of these laborers came from Eastern UP and Vihar. So there were all these new items and I did not want to emphasize that. Of course, you know, certainly it impacted the economy of the country also and there was extensive support from the government. So all these issues are very common. And, you know, I thought it's a such an important issue that all the government throughout the world are taking such initiative to control this pandemic. So that's why I thought I should not, you know, discuss these points again and again. But my concern was that, of course, we have engineering interventions. And through this, we can, you know, certainly control these pathogens. One of the important things I want to emphasize here is that we did extensive work on this drinking water facilities located particularly near the river banks. And we have done some work on this river bank filtration. Now, one of the serious concern is that when the flood is, it stays, when the water level in the river rises, there is more exchange of flow towards the abstraction wells, which are located in the vicinity of this one. So with this more increase of the flow, the time of travel to the abstraction well reduces and this is very critical, because sometimes we have done some work on the pathogen removals. So when the flood stage is increasing, this is again posing a risk to the abstraction well because there we are observing, you know, some concentration of E coli. So, you know, again, one has to see really that under these conditions of, you know, COVID, if the water which we are supplying to the people for drinking purpose, we properly try to eliminate this. Otherwise, you know, if we are, so this is something, you know, very important, which you have learned. And I think this work is also, you know, published on this pathogen removal and the effect of flood stage. I can share this to you at the later stage. But this is what I wanted to say through some of these slides. And of course I have many, but I think considering the limited amount of time, I just thought I should present some of the technical work which we are doing. Yeah. Okay, wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you, Professor. So you put a lot of emphasis on the technological solutions. That's really good. If we see the poll, then we see that there is, yeah, quite a variety of, of, of preferences among the audience. We see that strengthening the public health system as a, as a very high scoring of 56% flood protection, a little bit more, but also early warning systems and social protection measures are needed. And I would say, when we talk about the public health system, it was also mentioned by Professor Shaalam had that access to health care facilities needs needs more attention. So I think that is that is nice. Let's move on to the do the next speaker and that is again, Professor Shaalam, could you put more on, on your thoughts on this, what needs to be done, but also maybe a reflection on the outcome of the polls what what the audience is, is, is really voting. Okay. Let me quickly touch base on the wastewater treatment thing. The COVID is a airborne disease. And the virus is spread to human to human contact. It's not a waterborne disease that what we see so far. So I'm not sure how wastewater treatment is going. No, in India, we have observed it, the concentration of this virus in the wastewater, you know, we have observed this. That's why I want to present it. Yes. There are reports. Hello. We can hear you Shaalam, we can hear you Shaalam. See that your connection is poor. We started able to hear the Shaalam. Let's see. Shaalam you're back. You're muted. Hello, Chris, can you hear me. Yes, yes, you were, you were telling airborne disease. Yeah, locked out of the network, I think. I was saying this disease, the virus is spread by droplets, and mainly through human to close human to human contact. That's why the public health specialist are saying that for mass care use of mass for hand washing and so on there. There are some limited studies on how the virus can spread through water and wastewater. But those are still inconclusive, but by majority of the scientific studies that we have seen so far, the virus spreads through droplets and through human to human contact. So I'm not sure if wastewater treatment is going to help that much. It will certainly help for waterborne diseases, but for this disease, I'm not sure. There is one point I wanted to make. And then going back to the lessons and actions that are needed. So first I said that from Bangladesh perspective. The first thing that has been affected are is the livelihood of the poor people, pure and marginal that has been hit the most. The second one is education. And the third is healthcare facilities access to healthcare facilities. So these are the three things I think have been most important and needs the these three need for the retention for future preparedness and for actions. First thing is the public safety measures, healthcare safety measures, how people should respond to such cases, such pandemics in times of disasters. So there are some policies that are being made, but these policies will have to be embedded in the disaster management protocols. And so this has to be clearly spelled out in Bangladesh. There's a very nice document called standing orders on disaster. That means in in these in these standing orders, there are clear directives of what people should do at what point, starting from public officials to the elected representatives, even the key to the rescue equipment who should hold the key. Even that is spelled out. So this is a very detailed document. So if the public safety measures or the protocols can be can be embedded to these type of document, like the standing orders on disaster. I think that would be really helpful because the standing orders for disaster or in short SOD is activated every time there is a flood, every time there is a storm surge. So these are activated automatically and the government institutions they run very well under these directives. So in Bangladesh at least I think these public safety measures to protect against the virus or pandemic in future. If they can be integrated in such policies that will be really useful. So that is one thing. But the second question is, even if we have this public safety measures in place related to such disasters in in future floods and storm surges. Are we really going to enforce those, for example, the evacuation to the shelters at time of cyclone and storm surge. Those have been there. There is a very well program very well structured programming Bangladesh called cyclone preparedness program. So it is very well organized so people are activated immediately there is a cyclone warning. So they start evacuating people to this shelters and it functions really well. And what the question is, are people first is, do people really recognize this virus as a threat, and in addition to what there is already. And the second is, do are we really planning to upgrade such shelters or flood protection or storm surge shelters to address these viruses. For example, these virus, when the shelters were designed, they were not really provisions for safe distancing. So the COVID was not projected at the time. So now I think there is also a need to upgrade this shelters and all these evacuation plans to bring in these compounding effects of the virus. Basically, safe distancing and healthcare or public safety measures, those will have to be embedded in these infrastructure and also in these policies. So these are the things I think that are needed immediately. Okay, wonderful. Shalaam. Thanks. Very concrete suggestions. And we will come back to those later in the discussion. Now, Dr. Tran and Dr. Kwan. Is Dr. Tran able to speak? Is his microphone working? I think he's left the room. He left the room. Okay. Then Dr. Kwan, could you take over? If you talk about, say, what concrete actions are required. And you heard a few from Professor Odja, more in the technology sphere and from Professor Shalaam. He also was pleading to really embed those interventions in the existing strategies and policies. And but also the question, how do we incentivize people to act and to, yeah, to act to the threat in an effective way, upgrading of shelters have been mentioned. So what are your thoughts for Vietnam? Is there a need to change and to take action? Yes. Thank you, Chris. And I think I was very impressed in some others discussion from India and Bangladesh. Yeah. And I think in Vietnam, we have maybe also some quite similar patterns, but first make that to the COVID. I think we have our lesson was like, I think that the risk control of the bedlamist. It was very good because it reduced a lot of risk of the combat effects. So I think the lesson there was people was really follow the government instructions and as long as the COVID is controlled, then we were able to, I mean, not really, but I mean, the combat effect is not there. Yeah. And secondly, regarding the action, I think we even, the risk especially with the flood is still there and now we have like the flood over flood is really extreme and the memories of the people was like almost lost. Because in the middle of Vietnam, this is like again, more or less, more than 10 years flood events and the early warning system or preparedness is not really to cope with this extreme flood in the middle of Vietnam. So in terms of this action, I think the regular awareness or educations preparedness for extreme event, it should be followed year by year. And also the action take is not only to the short term, but it should be like more middle or long term planning or strategy to cope with the risk. I talked with me because most of our action was not like to cope with the short term, but in terms of the extreme event of the flood, the normal infrastructure is not able to cope with. So we have been observed it in the middle of Vietnam where we have like a lot of reservoirs and things and and with this, it needs to have like a long term opera plan to live, for example, into reservoir operations or also controlling upstream cashman, this long term, it cannot be done in the short term. And also for the city flooding in the cities, the current capacity of the drainage system cannot cope with this kind of extreme events. And we were also lucky that I know I mean not we have also the problem with water pollution during the flood events. I think it was lucky because the COVID-19 were controlled. If it's not controlled, then then then the water pollution and then the flooding is to be called much more problems. Yeah, so, so back to the second recommendation action is the short term action should link to the middle or long term plan or strategies. I think that is two of my colleagues. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Klan. Your flexibility is super, by the way, you are still in the car and you managed to address all the questions in a very eloquent way. I'm really impressed. Very good. My suggestion is now that we move on to the plenary discussion and the audience is of course invited to engage. You can raise your hand and ask questions to the speakers and that we really want to establish a discussion. So I'm sure there are questions among the audience. Please raise your hand if you have a question for one of the speakers. All results show, as you can see, that the most of the audience supports the idea that we have to continue in working on our flood protection structures and that work has to go on. But also there needs to be extra attention to, say, public health systems, and a minor group was pleading for social protection measures early warning, and only one had another idea. So may I invite the audience to engage with the speakers? Who has a question for one of the speakers? Can you please raise your hand or use the chat box? Let's see. Are there questions? There is a question for Margie Syregard. Is there any research specifically about SARS-CoV-2 behavior in wastewater and water and removal treatment? And I think there was a bit of a discussion between Professor Odja and Professor Shalaam about the airborne disease or not. Is it effective? Maybe I would suggest that we skip this question. Let's see. Are there other questions from the audience? No questions from the audience? Yes, so Chris, we had received some questions and comments in the round that just concluded. Perhaps I could show them on the screen. So these are some responses that we got in the chat box from some of the previous rounds. What lessons can be drawn? And yeah, you can see them on the screen. And if there's anything you would like to respond to, any of the speakers? Suggestion was to include COVID-19 protocol in the contingency plan in the area, especially the evacuation plan, wastewater treatment has been discussed. And the other comment was discussed already, I think. Yeah. Maybe the question of Margie is a bit close to the recommendation of that nature paper. And that nature paper, which you can download from the website of this announcement of this webinar. But that nature paper is fleeing for a long-term strategy for pandemic preparedness as part of a sort of adaptation strategy. Now, maybe Shah Alam, you also already mentioned that you are an advocate of really aligning and integrating pandemic preparation. But preparedness, what do you see? How could pandemic preparedness be part of a long-term adaptation strategy? What could we do on the longer term? What should we define as long-term actions when we talk about pandemic preparedness? Professor Shah Alam, you are on mute? Yeah. Sorry, my network is a bit unstable, so I missed part of your question. Now, was the question the long-term adaptation strategy? Yes, exactly. How should we include the pandemic preparedness in a long-term adaptation strategy? What should be in there? Okay, preparedness. Yeah. I think the world has been talking about a new normal, and you must have heard it, that everywhere we are preparing for new normal. And some countries have been already prepared for this. For example, for online education, some universities, many universities were already doing it, so they did not have any problems switching to online education. And in other countries, they had to put some effort into it. So, this is going to be a slow process, but I think all the countries need to be prepared for such events in future, not only in education, but also for livelihoods and workplaces. And what should we do? And particularly for disaster management, I think there are things that we need to rethink, how we are designing our infrastructure, how we are designing our evacuation plan, how we are designing our shelters. And I think the added dimension that we have now is such pandemic. So, we need to integrate that into design, into policy, into long-term action. So, that will take some time, and I think that has to be taken very seriously, because we see COVID as an added dimension in most cases. We see that as a context, but in effect, what it has done, it has appeared as a disaster. Perhaps we do not recognize it, but this is a biological disaster, like a natural disaster, like flood or storm surge. So, this has to be integrated in our disaster management plan. This has to be integrated into the disaster management policy. So, and that will take some time. And who will do that? I think the governments are taking it seriously, but I'm not sure how seriously they will take it after this pandemic is over. But we probably need a longer-term preparedness in case there is another event in future. And I think everyone should be serious about it, including the scientists, activist groups, and people. I think everyone should be prepared for this long-term possibilities. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Good point. Thank you, Shailam. I see a hand-raising of Doan Van. Abraham, can you give him the floor? Doan, please. What is your question? Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I am from Vietnam Dila University. I am doing my boss doc in Kyoto University in Japan. So my question for Professor Woong. So, should our government incorporate a virus pandemic on long-term flood management in Vietnam? And if you agree with that, so how young researchers and scientists can rise, especially for like me, can raise our voice in such a master plan? Thank you. Very good question. Happy to have your input. Okay, Dr. Kwong, I have what's the question raised too, isn't it, Doan? Yes, I hear it. Thank you, Chris. And thank you very much, Dr. Bing. I think this is very interesting and I think also very difficult questions. I think this also back to the last response from Professor Abraham, I don't know, sorry, Professor from Bangladesh, about the holistic or interpreted disaster management. It's not only natural disaster, but can be also biological disaster. I think this integrated or holistic approach is very, it's needed, but also not easy in terms of sectoral crossing different sectoral. For example, in Vietnam, the natural disaster is now managed or handled most likely by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, but the biological risk or the pandemic is managed by the Ministry of Health. And so far, I have been highly observed the collaboration or the, I mean, the workings crossing these two sectors or two business three together. So I think this is really a challenge in Vietnam. So I think we may observe or we may learn some other countries in terms of holistic, integrated disaster management. I think, for example, I saw. Dr. Kwong, you just got muted. Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you again, please. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I think this is still very challenging. I think the conclusion is very challenging in Vietnam. And, but I think we need to to promote that. So, yeah, for me, also, I feel challenged from even myself from the National University, but I think we may try to promote this in the future. First, maybe with some conference or maybe with some, yeah, yeah, and some big events or meeting in Vietnam or maybe we can write some things. First, maybe from the paper, but then also some kind of policy recommendations. So I would very much to collaborate with you, Dr. Bing, that we can try to write some things to present at a conference and then maybe later we can write a document for like policy recommendation to to the government in terms of disaster risk management, holistic scale. Yeah, so yeah, I am very happy to collaborate. Now, that is a very nice invitation from Dr. Kwantu, Dr. Bin, Dr. Bin, maybe to have you, your question was about is, is there a need and what can we do and what can the young researchers do? Do you have suggestions by yourself? What is what you want to do and where do you feel you could contribute? Dr. Bin. Yes, so first from my point of view, so first I agree with Professor Wu, so that we first should write something and report something from our research and then if our government finds it helpful, maybe they will find us later. But I'm not sure how about in Vietnam because like for example, I study about the sediment in parts of dams in the Mekong River on salinity, intrusion and riverbed incision in the Mekong Delta. I found some interesting results and maybe they have some influence and someone recommended my paper to the ministry and then that's helpful for negotiating with other countries for dam construction and I think that direction can be applied in this flood management also. Yes, thank you very much Professor Wu, so I would like to have cooperation with you in the future in some activities. Okay, thank you, Dr. Bin, very good. I suggest that we are now answering the question, would it be useful to invest in pandemic preparedness in a post COVID world? And I would like to ask Abraham to show the poll and we ask the audience to prompt their vote. So the question to all is, would it be useful hearing also this discussion to invest in pandemic preparedness and in a post COVID world? So I would like to invite the audience to vote. We see that the majority is supporting a yes. And along the lines of Professor Shah Alam that pandemic preparedness should be a part of or embedded in a strategy in our adaptation and flood risk management strategies and policies. We should revisit the design and the use of infrastructure, for instance also shelters, more taken into account social distancing. Let's see, the majority is a yes. COVID-like pandemics are likely to recur. No, not yet reasonable, only to 30%. And Dr. Professor Odja, what is your response to this? What would be your motivation to opt for one of those two options? Where do you stand? See, what I believe is that I try to emphasize on wastewater treatment and adequate quality of the drinking water because if pathogens are present, the one thing is sure that if you consume such a water without any treatment, your immune system is going to fight that. If you are weak enough, again, you will be targeted to any serious type of virus which comes into existence. So that's the one thing. So it's very important that we should try to maintain the infrastructure in such a way that we get adequate wastewater treatment. We try to achieve very good quality of drinking water. And these viruses, though I know that this COVID transmission is through air droplets, but it's a much better water. And you know, water droplets are there. And if we are talking about the flood situation, even if we are talking about the heavy precipitation, these droplets also can find their pathways into the surface runoff. So I think these are the questions we have not done it research and we are not in such a stage to just say that only these things are not important. So it's very important that we should also talk about technologies. We can remove these viruses wherever they are present in the wastewater also. And that's why I try to focus on this specific case studies where we detected the viruses in the wastewater. So because the pathways are so interlinked, so we just cannot isolate. Okay, so maybe some persons may not be affected, but because of these pathways, and the possible, you know, occurrence of these viruses may also take place in other water bodies. So this is the one thing which I just wanted to emphasize that our preparedness should be in such a way that we give importance to, you know, these basic things regarding the wastewater treatment, providing, you know, a good quality of drinking water to the people. And apart from this, the efforts should be, you know, the regular testing that whether these viruses are such kind of things go to the food chain, because that is very dangerous. Because I have seen in many places in India also that, you know, the, for example, arsenic virus is not an arsenic, but I'm just giving an example here that how it came into the food chain and most of the rice quality which we got, you know, in one of the, you know, in the state in India, you know, the arsenic concentration was found in that, you know, rice grain. So this kind of thing, one has to really look into it that how the transmission of these viruses is taking place. That's the one. And if they are going to affect our existing, you know, water bodies, this is the second thing. And third, you know, because in India, again, the people go to the bathing hats, right. And, you know, and there are many places where large number of people go, you know, just for religious purposes to the bathing guards. And I just showed you in one of my presentations, a typical slide from Varanasi, right, that during the flood season also, people will try to go and have bath, you know, such is the, you know, belief that you have a holiday in the river Ganges and you get all the vaccines are, you know, purified. So such kind of, you know, things are also there in the society. And people have to be educated that in a COVID situation like this and other pandemic situations like this. You just forget about your sentiments and you try to, you know, follow the advisory issued by the government and then I think the people will be more safe from the such pandemics in the future. So whenever the such pandemics are there, the scientific aspects need to be highlighted by the policy makers to the people, common people. And I think this type of work has been done recently by the government of India. And people are now more conscious that if such a pandemic occurs, what kind of precautions they should take place. So I think we have to look also into the engineering interventions, scientific interventions, and, you know, this social interaction with the people, with the policy makers, I think they are all very important to fight such a pandemic in the future. Okay. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And what what what you are really advocating, you are saying that there are still a lot of questions and knowledge gaps around the transmission of viruses, and we need to really have a better understanding how it really works. Yes, your, your plea that sounds very good. I see that there is from Bob Bruce remark. He said we should focus on real water problems rather than concerning the virus. Let pharmacies working on producing the vaccine hope soon everything back to normal. Yeah, that is, that is a good point. Unfortunately, I would say that the, that we are not there yet. And, and the majority of the audience is still concerned about about the virus and the pandemic disasters and, and, and really is is supporting the view that we should focus on including biological disasters, as well, much more. But that was a good, good suggestion to trigger the debate. And I would like now to a view of the time because we have say about 15 minutes left to visit the last question Abraham. And the last question is, it's a sort of open question to everybody. Would you like to share your own experience managing flood episodes during COVID times. So is there in the audience. Other participants who really would like to share their experience. Abraham, could you make that chat box visible. Yes, Chris. So I have placed the question in the chat box and just to repeat the question is, would you like to share your own experiences managing or experiencing flooded episodes during COVID times. If any of you would like to respond to that please raise your hand and we will activate your webcam and your microphone. Or if you're having trouble finding the raise your hand option if you could indicate in the chat box that you would like to make a remark. Please do so. And we will make you visible and audible. If not, then what I would propose is that I briefly go through the the conclusions of today's webinar. And we started with a presentation for this object. And I would say that he came up with very, very interesting results, where he substantiated, say, the expectation that there is a positive relationship between rainfall, heavy rainfall events and the number of COVID cases. And I think that that really was was interesting and very new. Professor it's also clean for more research in the transmission of viruses and there are still a lot of knowledge gaps in this field. And that was a strong plea from from from his side. And also, I would say from the Indian context that there are really serious issues in India, as we speak. Then we had a contribution of Professor Shah Alam. And it was not the opposite, but it was really a bit more, I would say, a different perspective on COVID. And there were, of course, expectations about what COVID could mean for them from the Bangladeshi. And there were quite pessimistic scenarios have been have been have been disseminated. But as we speak, we see that that the infection numbers are low. It did not really happen. And, yeah, it is maybe confined to the more affluent people you refer to the rich people disease. So, yeah, it is it is an issue. But the question is, should COVID receive that that that specific attention as we were aiming for in this this webinar. And of course, it is it still is important to to keep going on with increasing our efforts to protect the country against floods. So that is that is what Professor Shah Alam was mentioning. Then we had a contribution from Dr. Tran and Dr. Quang. And yeah, the Vietnam has COVID control well, that was the conclusion made the number of cases were very limited. The three waves which has been hit Vietnam were not that impactful. And yeah, it is it is in terms of direct impacts are very, very minor. Now if we look at how the audience has voted and the audience. I would say it was not really straightforward, but the majority really feels that the compound risk is is significant and needs to have more attention. So that is, I would say the first part of the discussion. And then we moved on to the part what has to be done what can we do about it. And, and, and again from Professor Odja, there was a plea to to invest more in in science and technology. And there was also a strong plea of Shah Alam to to pay more attention to to health and health care and maybe that is one of the, the, the legacies of COVID that health care is is much more now an integrated part of disaster risk management and flood risk management. Then, since of Dr one about the compound risk and the situation in Vietnam and Dr one is also playing for a more holistic approach to really have that pandemic preparedness in in our long term adaptation strategies. And he was also playing for for reaching out to to the young people as as Dr been. Now, as we see the question has COVID compounded the risk by floods. And as you can see here the majority 50% was supporting this. So, my conclusion of this, this webinar is that. Yeah, the, the answers are not straightforward and we, we, we all admit that that COVID means that we have to find a new normal. It has it will impact our future lives, and it really calls for, say, a sort of longer term, more holistic approach where biological disasters are taking into account. So that is, I would say one of the, the, the points the conclusions we can draw from this workshop. This webinar as a second point which I would like to mention is the role of health and health care, which is now more on the forefront. Also, for the engineers and flood risk managers of today. So that is what I would like to say about the conclusions of this, this webinar so far. And now I would like to ask the speakers to give a sort of final remark. So Professor Odja, is there some some final remark you want to make. Thank you, Chris. I think you nicely summarized and, you know, whatever the governments are doing, I think much has to be done. You know, again, I'll try to emphasize the scientific and technological part only. And, you know, we have to make a first to understand that wherever such pandemics do take place, we should precisely identify the pathways through which they are going to affect our normal life. And if you understand that very well, then our preparedness can be also in the right direction. Yeah, I think this is very important. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Some final remarks. Next, I think this is a real possibility that will face such pandemic in future and we should be prepared in policy and design infrastructure access. And this should be embedded and integrated into the current DSTM management policies and plans. So this is my final conclusion. Okay. That's it. Thank you, Professor Shalaam. Dr. Kwan. Dr. Kwan. Dr. Kwan, could you please unmute yourself? Yes. I think my final remark, I think this in terms of COVID, first we observe in Vietnam, I think is the responsibility of everyone in terms of protecting themselves and also carrying the community is the most pretty piece to ensure that we control the COVID. And for the long term, the combat risk is, I think, to be much more difficult in the near future. So we need to work closely, I mean, in some disciplinary scientifically, also crossing different tracks. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Kwan. And now the audience. Last remark, I see that Bob Bruce is saying in reality the budget to mitigate what the issues will go to recovery from COVID. So I feel that you have some concerns about the priorities and do we set the priorities right? Maybe Bob Bruce, could you take the microphone and explain a bit your concerns about this? Abraham, could you give him the floor? Abraham, you can give the floor to Bob Bruce. Yes, I have. He says, sorry, no microphone. I think his microphone is not working. No microphone. Okay. Now, what we take from this is that you are concerned about, are we setting the right priorities? Is COVID now really attracting significant financial resources and do we invest in the right things and shouldn't we really step to what is really needed and that is managing the water problems. So that's a good point. Thank you, Bob Bruce, for that remark. Is there anybody else from the audience who want to make a remark, sort of final comment? A question maybe. Don, you raised your hand. Dr. Bin raised his hand. Dr. Bin, please. Yes. Thank you very much. So I would like to have another question. I think this question may be best for Professor Ocha. From his analysis, I saw he showed some numbers of the flood disaster and COVID cases, positive cases, but because not so clear, so I don't know. My question is, how or what kind of analysis needed to show the effects of COVID on flood disaster? I tried to show some of the data from Indian Metallurgical Department in which they specified the precipitation in different states of India. At the same time, we collected the data of the COVID cases and Indian Metallurgical Department classifies the states into different categories. So we considered the data of those states and the corresponding COVID cases and then we plotted that and this was done from October 1st to December 7th till yesterday. And when we plotted these, then we observed that when there was in the states, particularly where there was excess precipitation from the normal, there was a very clear cut indication that the number of COVID cases are increasing with the amount of precipitation. That's what I'm saying that even if we assume that this virus transmission takes place in the air and it is through the droplets, but when the heavy precipitation is there, these droplets can come again in the pathways and they can influence in different ways. So that's what I was trying to emphasize. Okay. Is that a clear answer, Dr. Bin? Yeah. I feel so not so very clear for me because... No, but this is what the results we got. You know, that's what I'm saying. None of the data is from us. The precipitation data is provided by Indian Metallurgical Department and the COVID cases are from COVID-19 sites in India. So these two are just processed and this is the interesting result which is coming. That's what I wanted to emphasize. So there has to be lots of two variables in linear or two variables for... No, the interesting trend was coming in only in one of the slides. I think you might have seen it was not coming in all the cases, but in one of the cases where the precipitation was heavy. So in excess precipitation in states, this was the trend which was observed. So what I see from this, Dr. Bin, is that there is a positive correlation, but it does not explain... It's not give the cause. It could be that people are gathering or it could be born or whatever. So that is still open. That is a bit your point. Yes, I got it. Good question. Thank you, Dr. Bin. Another question from the audience. If not, then we will stop here and the schedule was frankly on to stop on 10.45 and it was being a very interesting webinar. At least that was my feeling. I would like to thank the speakers very much for taking your time and showing your results and findings and perceptions about this topic. And also the audience for attending this webinar. We will make a very brief report and again, the conclusions are not straightforward. We all feel there is reason to really take action, but it is not straightforward and also the experience in the different countries in India and Vietnam and Bangladesh are not alike. They have their very typical context specific issues and that help us, of course, to draw a sort of straightforward conclusion. But we will make a report, a brief report and that will be made available for you when you visit the website. And Abraham, can you maybe explain how people can get access to the information and and maybe some next steps? Yes, so for starters, the recording of the webinar will be available on on on these websites links to which I have just posted in the chat. So and then when the report is ready, what we can also do is we can also place the reports over there. But also people who have registered the participants who have registered they will receive the updates that recording is ready and report is ready through email. Okay, now then finally, I want to thank you Abraham for for your wonderful support and Nadine as well. I don't know whether she's in the audience from the new PC program, which has financially support this this this webinar, and I will, I will make a brief report and I will also come back to the speakers. Maybe we can we can arrive at a sort of joint document joint paper or whatever but we will explore that in your course. And we all wish you good health and stay healthy and hope to see you see you again soon. Thank you all. Bye bye.