Social background in char areas, Bangladesh: Implication for Japanese hazard mapping technology

Since both Japan and Bangladesh suffer from floods every year, structural and nonstructural measures have been developed in each country. Some of Japanese measures are applicable in Bangladesh by adjusting them to fit the selected area’s condition such as technological and social background. In Bangladesh, there are local strategies for mitigating the flood such as raising/elevating their houses with plinth and placing sandbags on the riverbank. However technology intervention is not common in char areas. Char areas are inside and along major rivers in Bangladesh. The char islands and attached sandbars are unstable because they are developed by erosion and accretion. Some of the island chars exist several decades but others have short histories. In this research, river floods in Bangladesh and in Japan are compared for clarifying the differences, and then social background in char areas is analyzed for discussing possible way of transferring hazard mapping technology, which is a Japanese major technology for flood risk reduction.