Dr. Takahiro Sayama is an Associate Professor at Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan. Prior to the current position, he worked at International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM), Public Works Research Institute (PWRI) in Tsukuba Japan. During his serve at ICHARM, he participated in the UNESCO Pakistan project, which was initiated after the floods in Pakistan in 2010.

He stayed at Oregon State University as a JSPS research fellow and a visiting scientist in the field of catchment hydrology. His expertise include water related disaster risk management, particularly the development of an integrated rainfall-runoff and flood inundation model for real-time flood prediction and climate change impact assessment. He published more than 130 peer-reviewed journal papers and received awards including “The Young Scientists’ Award” by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

He serves as a national committee member of UNESCO-IHP, the secretariat of the UNESCO-Chair, WENDI and the section secretary of AOGS Hydrological Section. He is editor-in-chief of Journal of Japan Society for Natural Disaster Science (JSNDS) and a vice editor-in-chief of Hydrological Research Letters (HRL).