Flood Prevention Strategy in Taiwan: Lessons Learned from Typhoon Morakot

Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan during August 7-9, 2009. Its record-breaking rainfall caused catastrophic dam-age, making it the deadliest typhoon to visit Taiwan in the last 50 years. Conducting a three-months and 160-member-strong field investigation of the scale and causes of this disaster, this paper proposes strategies effective to improve flood prevention work in Tai-wan. The severe flood disaster triggered by Typhoon Morakot’s excessive rainfall is attributable to four fac-tors: (1) hydraulic system failures, (2) river flow retar-dation, (3) reservoir release, and (4) land subsidence. Based on these findings, this paper proposes comprehensive improvement strategies in hydraulic facility inspection, emergency response, river basin manage-ment, and climate change assessment to improve flood prevention work in Taiwan. This study combines gov-ernmental, academic, and public efforts in investigat-ing effective post-disaster flood prevention strategies that we hope will prove to be a useful reference for other countries while facing such issues.