Dato' Ir. Dr. Hj. Md. Nasir b. Md. Noh, currently holds the position of Director General in the Department of Irrigation and Drainage, Malaysia (DID) Federal Headquarters, Kuala Lumpur. He has 28 years of working experience in various fields of civil engineering works. He has involved in project management, planning, design, implementation of inter-state river basin and flood mitigation mega projects; construction supervision, operation, maintenance and rehabilitation of river, coastal and drainage infrastructures; stormwater control operations; flood warning, forecasting and monitoring system.

He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng) with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM); also a corporate member of the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (MIEM). He was a Council Member of IEM for the sessions 2017/2018.

Dato' Ir. Dr. Hj. Md Nasir b. Md Noh, is also a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) with EnviroCert International, USA (since 2007). He sits in the Executive Committee for the Malaysian Stormwater Organisation (MSO), a Non-Governmental Organisation set up in 2008 to promote, train and certify Erosion and Sediment Control professionals under an agreement with EnviroCert International, USA.

Professor Van-Thanh-Van Nguyen

Professor Nguyen is Endowed Brace Chair Professor of Civil Engineering at McGill University (Canada). He is also Chair of Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics since 2009 to date. In addition, he has served as Director of the Brace Centre for Water Resources Management (2007-2017) as well as Acting Director (2007-2008) and Associate Director (2004- 2012) of the Global Environmental and Climate Change Centre at McGill. His scientific and professional contributions over more than 35 years have been mostly in the areas of Hydrology and Water Resources Management. His research interests cover a remarkable range of topics including: assessment of climate change impacts on water resources; modelling and analyses of extreme hydrologic processes; rural and urban watershed modelling; and management of water resources systems for sustainable development. He is author or co-author of over 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals, monographs, and conference proceedings.

He has served in various expert committees at the provincial, national and international levels (WMO and UNESCO) as well as members of different journal editorial boards ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, IAHR Journal of Hydro-environment Research, IAHR Journal of Hydroinformatics, etc.). He has been invited to deliver keynote and prestigious lectures at several universities and scientific conferences in Canada and in many other countries. He has been invited professor at universities in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Furthermore, since several years he has been active in international co-operation activities with colleagues in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions as well as an active member in several professional associations (President of the Hydrological Science Section of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society, 2006-2008; Founding member of Asia Pacific Association of Hydrology and Water Resources; Fellow member of the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering; Members of the American Geophysical Union, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Water Resources Association, International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research, and International Water Association). Finally, as a professional engineer, he has been involved in several projects with consulting companies in Canada and in other countries (South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, etc.).

PROFESSOR EIICHI NAKAKITA is Kyoto University’s Vice Director of Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) since 2014. He is also a professor in Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Disasters Division since 2004. He obtained his PhD from Kyoto University, Japan in 1990. His research interests includes hydrometeorology and radar hydrology, rainfall and flood predictions, utilization of weather radars into disaster mitigation, and climate change and has over 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals.

He is leading big collaborative research projects with other universities and institutes such as “Integrated Research on State-of-the-art Multi-sensors In-situ Observation of Storm Genesis, and Reduction of Serious Disaster due to Heavy Rainfall” and Team D of “Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models”, supported by the Ministry of Education Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). He is a member of the River Council of Japan, Committee on Utilizing Weather Radar into River Management in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation, and committees on Climate change and Adaptation in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism (MOIT), the Ministry of the Environment (MOE), and MEXT. He is also a member of Leadership Team, Climate Change Working Group, Technical Divisions of Innovation and Professional Development (IPD), IAHR.

As for his accomplishment, he has been awarded with few awards including Prize for Encouragement from Japan Society of Civil Engineers (1993), Science Award from Japan Society of Hydrology and Water Resources (2012) and Gambo Awards from Meteorological Society of Japan (2016).

Abstracts: Professor Eiichi Nakakita