scholarly journals Vulnerability and Adaptation to Flood Hazards in Rural Settlements of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 3490
Author(s):  
Rendani B. Munyai ◽  
Hector Chikoore ◽  
Agnes Musyoki ◽  
James Chakwizira ◽  
Tshimbiluni P. Muofhe ◽  
...  

Climate change has increased the frequency of extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall leading to floods in several regions. In Africa, rural communities are more vulnerable to flooding, particularly those that dwell in low altitude areas or near rivers and those regions affected by tropical storms. This study examined flood vulnerability in three rural villages in South Africa’s northern Limpopo Province and how communities are building resilience and coping with the hazard. These villages lie at the foot of the north-eastern escarpment, and are often exposed to frequent rainfall enhanced by orographic factors. Although extreme rainfall events are rare in the study area, we analyzed daily rainfall and showed how heavy rainfall of short duration can lead to flooding using case studies. Historical floods were also mapped using remote sensing via the topographical approach and two types of flooding were identified, i.e., those due to extreme rainfall and those due to poor drainage or blocked drainage channels. A field survey was also conducted using questionnaires administered to samples of affected households to identify flood vulnerability indicators and adaptation strategies. Key informant interviews were held with disaster management authorities to provide additional information on flood indicators. Subsequently, a flood vulnerability index was computed to measure the extent of flood vulnerability of the selected communities and it was found that all three villages have a ‘vulnerability to floods’ level, considered a medium level vulnerability. The study also details temporary and long-term adaptation strategies/actions employed by respondents and interventions by local authorities to mitigate the impacts of flooding. Adaptation strategies range from digging furrows to divert water and temporary relocations, to constructing a raised patio around the house. Key recommendations include the need for public awareness; implementation of a raft of improvements and a sustainable infrastructure maintenance regime; integration of modern mitigations with local indigenous knowledge; and development of programs to ensure resilience through incorporation of Integrated Development Planning.

Author(s):  
Rendani B. Munyai ◽  
Agnes Musyoki ◽  
Nthadeuleni S. Nethengwe

This study assesses flood vulnerability, levels of vulnerability, determinants of flood vulnerability and coping strategies for flood hazards. The vulnerability and resilience of the local communities are key concepts in this study. Most households are vulnerable to flood hazards. It is therefore important to measure their levels of vulnerability and assess their responses for current and future planning. A flood vulnerability index was used to measure the extent of flood vulnerability. Key informant interviews, field surveys and household questionnaires were used to collect the data. The results show that vulnerability to flood in this community is determined by the nature of soil, dwelling type, employment, education and amount of rainfall in a season. Social and economic components scored higher than the physical environment, while social factors are higher than the economic factors. Contextual coping strategies in this community were temporary relocation, evacuation to a safe area and waiting for government and neighbours to help. The study recommends that public awareness campaigns, early warning systems and improved disaster management strategies must take into consideration differentiated levels of vulnerability and community coping mechanisms and preferences.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52
Author(s):  
Nitin Mundhe

Floods are natural risk with a very high frequency, which causes to environmental, social, economic and human losses. The floods in the town happen mainly due to human made activities about the blockage of natural drainage, haphazard construction of roads, building, and high rainfall intensity. Detailed maps showing flood vulnerability areas are helpful in management of flood hazards. Therefore, present research focused on identifying flood vulnerability zones in the Pune City using multi-criteria decision-making approach in Geographical Information System (GIS) and inputs from remotely sensed imageries. Other input data considered for preparing base maps are census details, City maps, and fieldworks. The Pune City classified in to four flood vulnerability classes essential for flood risk management. About 5 per cent area shows high vulnerability for floods in localities namely Wakdewadi, some part of the Shivajinagar, Sangamwadi, Aundh, and Baner with high risk.


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chul-Min Ko ◽  
Yeong Yun Jeong ◽  
Young-Mi Lee ◽  
Byung-Sik Kim

This study aimed to enhance the accuracy of extreme rainfall forecast, using a machine learning technique for forecasting hydrological impact. In this study, machine learning with XGBoost technique was applied for correcting the quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF) provided by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) to develop a hydrological quantitative precipitation forecast (HQPF) for flood inundation modeling. The performance of machine learning techniques for HQPF production was evaluated with a focus on two cases: one for heavy rainfall events in Seoul and the other for heavy rainfall accompanied by Typhoon Kong-rey (1825). This study calculated the well-known statistical metrics to compare the error derived from QPF-based rainfall and HQPF-based rainfall against the observational data from the four sites. For the heavy rainfall case in Seoul, the mean absolute errors (MAE) of the four sites, i.e., Nowon, Jungnang, Dobong, and Gangnam, were 18.6 mm/3 h, 19.4 mm/3 h, 48.7 mm/3 h, and 19.1 mm/3 h for QPF and 13.6 mm/3 h, 14.2 mm/3 h, 33.3 mm/3 h, and 12.0 mm/3 h for HQPF, respectively. These results clearly indicate that the machine learning technique is able to improve the forecasting performance for localized rainfall. In addition, the HQPF-based rainfall shows better performance in capturing the peak rainfall amount and spatial pattern. Therefore, it is considered that the HQPF can be helpful to improve the accuracy of intense rainfall forecast, which is subsequently beneficial for forecasting floods and their hydrological impacts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Brittany A. Trottier ◽  
Daam Settachan

AbstractThis summary reports on the outcomes and common issues faced among the countries represented at the Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting on Children’s Environmental Health, a meeting that was held at the Chulabhorn Research Institute in Bangkok, Thailand, and which focused on cross-cutting issues and commonalities among countries/regions, discussion of lessons learnt, exploring opportunities for policy-relevant research collaborations, and reviewing available educational tools to help translate research findings into tangible outputs. The common children’s environmental health issues faced by countries in the Asia-Pacific region include indoor and outdoor air pollution; unregulated and inadequate waste management; chemical and infectious agents in water used for drinking and cooking; hazardous pesticide use; and climate change and extreme weather events. The meeting participants agreed there is a need for multisectoral involvement in each country to develop frameworks and guidelines, raising public awareness of risk, and managing exposures in order to tackle these common issues. Networking will allow countries to learn from each other and enhance their efforts to protect not only the health of children, but also that of the rest of the population at risk.


Author(s):  
V.A. Ijaware

Flood has negatively affected Ife Central Local Government Area of Osun State, Nigeria. This work is aimed at mapping the vulnerability of the area to flood. Its objectives addressed the ranking of various natural and artificial factors causing flood, the determination and delineation of vulnerability to flood in the study area. Using remote sensing and GIS techniques, coordinates of flooded sites were acquired with Global Navigation Satellite System receiver; Landsat 8 data were acquired from the USGS website. To map land use, elevation data were acquired from the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission Digital Elevation Models, soil data was obtained from the Nigerian Geological Survey website, and rainfall data was acquired from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellit. Using Pairwise Comparison, the various weights of factors constituting flood in the area were acquired. Weighted Linear Combination and Analytical Hierarchical Process was used in producing the flood hazard and flood vulnerability maps. ArcGIS 10.2 Software was used in spatial and attribute data acquisition, processing, and information presentation. The Pairwise Comparison method adopted was validated and observed to have a consistency ration of 0.003. Results obtained show that 9.2% of the study area is highly prone to flood hazards 20.4% is prone to flood hazard and 44.3% is moderately prone to flood hazard. The method adopted correctly identifies all existing flood incidence areas within the flood- prone areas in the hazard map. The maps produced will serve as an effective tool to aid the prevention and mitigation of flood disaster in the flood-prone area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Wolf ◽  
Ugur Ozturk ◽  
Kevin Cheung ◽  
Reik V. Donner

<p>Investigating the synchrony and interdependency of heavy rainfall occurrences is crucial to understand the underlying physical mechanisms and reduce physical and economic damages by improved forecasting strategies. In this context, studies utilizing functional network representations have recently contributed to significant advances in the understanding and prediction of extreme weather events.</p><p>To thoroughly expand on previous works employing the latter framework to the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) system, we focus here on changes in the spatial organization of synchronous heavy precipitation events across the monsoon season (April to August) by studying the temporal evolution of corresponding network characteristics in terms of a sliding window approach. Specifically, we utilize functional climate networks together with event coincidence analysis for identifying and characterizing synchronous activity from daily rainfall estimates with <span>a spatial resolution of 0.25° </span>between 1998 and 2018. Our results demonstrate that the formation of the Baiu front as a main feature of the EASM is reflected by a double-band structure of synchronous heavy rainfall with two centers north and south of the front. Although the two separated bands are strongly related to either low- or high-level winds which are commonly assumed to be independent, we provide evidence that it is rather their mutual interconnectivity that changes during the different phases of the EASM season in a characteristic way.</p><p>Our findings shed some new light on the interplay between tropical and extratropical factors controlling the EASM intraseasonal evolution, which could potentially help improving future forecasts of the Baiu onset in different regions of East Asia.</p><p> </p><p>Further details: F. Wolf, U. Ozturk, K. Cheung, R.V. Donner: Spatiotemporal patterns of synchronous heavy rainfall events in East Asia during the Baiu season. Earth System Dynamics (in review). Discussion Paper: Earth System Dynamics Discussions, (2020)</p>


Author(s):  
H. M. Park ◽  
M. A. Kim ◽  
J. Im

Severe weathers such as heavy rainfall, floods, strong wind, and lightning are closely related with the strong convection activities of atmosphere. Overshooting tops sometimes occur by deep convection above tropopause, penetrating into the lower stratosphere. Due to its high potential energy, the detection of OT is crucial to understand the climatic phenomena. Satellite images are useful to detect the dynamics of atmospheric conditions using cloud observation. This study used machine learning methods for extracting OTs. The reference cases were built using CloudSat, CALIPSO, and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data with Himawari-8 imagery. As reference cases, 11 OT events were detected. The aim of this study is the investigation of relationship between OTs cases and the occurrences of heavy rainfall. For investigation of OT effects, TRMM daily rain rate data (mm/hr) were collected and averaged at 25 km intervals until 250km from the center of OT cases. As the result, precipitation rate clearly coincides with the distance from the center of OT occurrence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
Donna Isra Silaban ◽  
Imelda Nahak

This study aims to examine development communication in community participation in village development planning. Community participation is very important because it can guarantee the effectiveness of development programs. There are a number of obstacles to community participation in development planning. Some identified barriers are the absence of legal support (Rumensten, 2012), lack of public awareness, low quality of human resources, length of stay and hours employment type (Wijaksono, 2013), lack of socialization from the government (Sagita, 2016), poverty and limited access provided by the government (Ompusunggu, 2017), and interest of bureaucracy in planning (Mbeche, 2017). These studies, indeed, have not considered yet cultural factor leading to disinvolvement. This qualitative case study extends previous studies by revealing the culture of mamfatin ukunrai discouraging community participation in development planning in Naran Village (pseudonym), Raimanuk Subdistrict, Belu Regency. Mamfatin ukunrai is a custom considering development planning is government's duties and responsibilities. Villagers are merely the executor of development programs. This custom is a legacy of royal government system and dominates the mindset of villagers. The tradition of highly appreciating the government unwittingly creates an invisible distance between government and society. It has discouraged villagers’ participation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Lilwah

Close to ninety percent of Guyana‟s population live along a low lying coastal plain, which is below sea level and very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. While the national government has not yet developed a comprehensive climate policy, the potential impacts of climate change is considered in several sectoral policies, much of which emphasize mitigation, with little focus on adaptation. This research examined the current priorities for adaptation by a review of the policies within the natural resource sector to identify opportunities for adaptation, especially ecosystem based adaptation. A Diagnostic Adaptation Framework (DAF) was used to help identify approaches to address a given adaptation challenge with regards to needs, measures and options. A survey questionnaire was used to support the policy reviews and identified four key vulnerabilities: coastal floods; sea level rise; drought and extreme weather events. The application of the DAF in selecting an adaptation method suggests the need for more data on drought and extreme weather events. Coastal flooding is addressed, with recognized need for more data and public awareness for ecosystem based adaptation


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 4807 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Guerrero-Hidalga ◽  
Eduardo Martínez-Gomariz ◽  
Barry Evans ◽  
James Webber ◽  
Montserrat Termes-Rifé ◽  
...  

In the current context of fast innovation in the field of urban resilience against extreme weather events, it is becoming more challenging for decision-makers to recognize the most beneficial adaptation measures for their cities. Detailed assessment of multiple measures is resource-consuming and requires specific expertise, which is not always available. To tackle these issues, in the context of the H2020 project RESCCUE (RESilience to cope with Climate Change in Urban arEas), a methodology to effectively prioritize adaptation measures against extreme rainfall-related hazards in urban areas has been developed. It follows a multi-phase structure to progressively narrow down the list of potential measures. It begins using less resource-intensive techniques, to finally focus on the in-depth analysis on a narrower selection of measures. It involves evaluation of risks, costs, and welfare impacts, with strong focus on stakeholders’ participation through the entire process. The methodology is adaptable to different contexts and objectives and has been tested in two case studies across Europe, namely Barcelona and Bristol.


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