Name: Remigio H. Galárraga-Sánchez, Ph. D.
Position: Principal Professor
Organization: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador.
Year you participated the JICA course: 1990, Sabo Engineering.
Description of duties:
Responsible of the area of mathematical modelling of debris and mud flow of volcanic origin from a possible volcanic eruption of the Cotopaxi volcano in the Province of Cotopaxi, central Ecuador. Hazard maps for lahars were identified in the northern drainage of this volcano. Based on these maps for several hazards mitigation works were designed to reduce the effects of a possible eruption of the volcano. At present I am the EPN Vice rector representative to the Research and Extension Commission at EPN.
Message for the rest of the volcanology and sabo community:
The Government of Japan provides us the unique opportunity to study Volcanic Sabo Engineering under the direction of the most qualified experts in this field in the world. We have had, also, the unique opportunity to actively participate in several studies in our countries not only in the vulcanology and sabo engineering fields, but also in general in the disaster prevention engineering field, in which we have had the opportunity to collaborate in several studies.
NOTE TO ALL OF YOU:
It is a good idea that JICA itself keeps a web site where all JICA participants in this field can look in the future and can also contribute to keep a HOUSE where all of us can go and visit and get to know what each of us is doing. I hope all of us continue working in this interesting field and I hope in other countries you all are doing DESASTER PREVENTION ENGINEERING.
Finally I do officially suggest to all of you that we give the name to this organization as VOLSEN: VOLcanologic and Sabo Engineering Network and that our Japanese coordinator organizes from Japan and thru the network a first competition to have our own logo lets say for the beginning of 2007. They in Japan can suggest the mechanism to choose one logo that identifies us in the future. Maybe each participant may send via email to the coordinator a proposed logo. Then they will collect all of them and present to all of us to vote for one of them (assigning points from 1 to 10 to three possible designs, avoiding voting for his/her country’s). The logo that gets the highest value will be our official logo. Well this is just an idea to keep all of us in contact.