The Internet went public in 1991 with the development and deployment of the World Wide Web (WWW).  Quipunet was conceived and created over the Internet as a virtual organization ad was incorporated in November of 1995. San Francisco State University provided Quipunet with its first Web presence by hosting our pages on their community server with the domain of Quipu.net. Eventually, Quipunet obtained its own domain as Quipunet.org.

In January of 1995, there had been a large earthquake in Kobe, Japan.  One of Quipunet’s principle founders was Dr Alberto Delgado, a Peruvian civil engineer working in Japan with a large Japanese construction company.  Having the vision to provide important information to other rural parts of the world, Dr Alberto along with other engineers and professionals saw an opportunity to organize and present a virtual seminar over the Internet. The seminar presented information and a discussion on the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake.

The Seminar on the Kobe earthquake caught the attention of another group, International Decade for National Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) who were impressed with the Kobe seminar. The IDNDR was launched in 1990 by the United Nations to try to reduce the damages done by flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes and other natural disasters. In order to address these issues, they were having annual conferences to discuss these issues. They asked our Quipunet team to help them add and present some of their seminars as additional virtual seminars in order to reach an audience in remote areas of the world.

Kobe Earthquake of 1995

 

The Hyogo-Ken Nambu (Kobe), Japan Earthquake and its lessons:

it was the first seminar presented in January of 1996. The list of presenters included professionals and professors from Universities in the field of Engineering and architecture. Distinguished academic and professionals presented it from Japan. We had 165 people from 16 countries, and what made us happy was to know that many of the attendants were from rural areas.

Solutions for cities at risk

SOLUTIONS FOR CITIES AT RISK - 1996:

QUIPUNET and San Francisco State University were the hosts and coordinators of this seminar presented for IDNDR (United Nations - International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction). This seminar explored different methods for safety for the cities at risk of natural disasters. This seminar had 456 attendants from 56 countries. Also, we had more than 8,000 " visits " to our pages. The comments we received were quite flattering.

Conference on the Internet

FLOODS, DROUGHTS, MATTERS FOR THE 21st CENTURY: 

The conference was on floods and droughts and had concise reports that sketched the impact of disasters related with water all over the world in specific regions. The main objective of this conference was to build a culture of prevention asking the participants to contribute with recent examples that have been successful in mitigating the impacts of disasters. This presentation had more than 700 attendants of 60 countries and more than 9,000 " visits " to our pages.

 

First Virtual Encounter of Educators of Latin America:

We sponsored this encounter that had more than 215 educators from 16 countries, 9 of them from Latin America.

International conference of IDNDR

International Conference of IDNDR and QUIPUNET - 1998:

FLOODS, NATURAL DISASTERS: PREVENTION, BEGINS WITH INFORMATION.

International Conference IDNDR

International Conference of IDNDR and QUIPUNET - 1999:

END OF THE DECADE OF PREVENTION