I would like to report that we held an iRIC workshop at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) from April 16th to 20th last week. UPM is one of the top public universities in Malaysia. This workshop, hosted by Professor Badronnisa Yusuf from the Department of Environmental Engineering at UPM’s Faculty of Engineering, covered basic usage of iRIC as well as calculation methods for rivers, floodplains, and debris flows.
Around 30 participants attended the workshop, including staff and graduate students from UPM’s educational and research departments, making it a relatively large-scale event. In addition to myself, Dr. Jon Nelson, who was staying in Bangkok at the time, Professor Yasuharu Watanabe from Kitami Institute of Technology , and Professor Hiroshi Takebayashi from Kyoto University participated as online instructors.
As this was the first overseas workshop since the update to iRIC version 4, there were some challenges due to various deficiencies in the Manulas and Tutorials. Moreover, version 4 has become quite multifunctional, which required additional time for menu selection and explanation, leading to some misallocation of time and a sense of unfinished coverage. These are points for reflection and improvement for future workshops.
However, the participants’ level of understanding was remarkable, and ultimately, I believe that the main points we wanted to convey were adequately communicated.
You can find photos from the workshop here:
https://i-ric.org/yasu/photos/20240417Malaysia/index.html

After the conclusion of the workshop, we also visited the famous UNESCO World Heritage site, Malacca. Malacca has been an important maritime and trading hub since ancient times, influenced by Portugal, the Netherlands, and England, resulting in a town with many historical relics. However, pollution of rivers and deterioration of buildings had progressed after the war. Since around 2000, efforts have been made to revitalize the cityscape and rivers, and it has now become one of Southeast Asia’s leading tourist destinations. It seems that the professors from UPM are contributing to the revitalization projects in Malacca, as they provided explanations of the initiatives and guided us around the area.
You can see photos from the field trip to Malacca here:
https://i-ric.org/yasu/photos/20240419Malacca/index.html