Flood situation @ KU

Water inside the campus has gone down a bit. We are awaiting official announcement on when it would be safe to go back to work. However for classes it has been announced that 2nd semester classes will start on 21st December. In the meantime SEAT Thai team communicate through emails. We hope to be able to resume field work soon to cover remaining surveys for WPs 5,6,7, and WP3, as well as collect water, soil and sediment samples for WP4.

A number of relief operations are being conducted by different groups to provide food and other stuff to communities surrounding the campus who are stranded in their homes.

More photos

To SEAT Partners

Please be informed that the SEAT Project team has stopped field work at the moment due to the flood situation in Thailand. Kasetsart University has closed indefinitely as water has gone inside the campus. Other areas such as some of our survey sites have also been inundated. Project team members have gone home as they also need to take care of their own residences.

Thank you for those who have sent emails to ask about the situation. However emails related to field work may not be responded to soonest by field team. 

Administration Building at KU
(Source: http://www.facebook.com/kucityfanpage)

The way going to the Faculty of Fisheries
(source: http://www.facebook.com/kucityfanpage) 

Source: http://www.facebook.com/kucityfanpage

LINKS:

Flood hits Kasetsart University 
Flood photos 
More flood photos (from kucityfanpage)
More flood photos (from Bangkok Post)

In-depth surveys & action research

Since July, the team has been busy with the in-depth surveys. These are follow-on surveys after the integrated survey we did last Nov 2010 to March 2011. The respondents for the follow-on surveys are a subset of the 405 farmers we interviewed during the integrated survey.

These are the types of in-depth surveys and their status:

• Chemical shops (WP6&7) - already conducted
• Chemical use in farms (WP6&7) - on-going
• Livelihood surveys (WP5) - on-going
• Collecting tilapia samples for FZT (WP6) - on-going
• Collecting water, sediment and feed samples (WP4) - waiting for farm list
• Life Cycle Assessment/Life Cycle Costing (WP3&5) - contacting prospective respondents across the value chain

All the research sites have been reported to be affected by the flooding in Thailand so access to the farms is limited at the moment.

We are also planning for the action research (WP9) with SMEs (local and European) which will be implemented next year.