Coping With Floods

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Ravello, Italy, 8-17 November 1999

Floods are natural hazards whose effects can deeply affect the economic and environmental equilibria of a region. Quality of life of people living in areas close to rivers depends on both the risk that a flood would occur and the reliability of flood forecast, warning and control systems. Tools for forecasting and mitigating floods have been developed through research in the recent past. Two innovations currently influence flood hazard mitigation, after many decades of lack of significant progress: they are the development of new technologies for real-time flood forecast and warning (based on weather radars and satellites) and a shift from structural to non-structural flood control measures, due to increased awareness of the importance of protecting the environment and the adverse impacts of hydraulic works on it. This book is a review of research progress booked in the improvements of forecast capability and the control of floods. Mostly the book presents the results of recent research in hydrology, modern techniques of real-time forecast and warning, and ways of controlling floods for smaller impacts on the environment. A number of case studies of floods in different geographical areas are also presented. Scientists and specialists working in fields of hydrology, environmental protection and hydraulic engineering will appreciate this book for its theoretical and practical content.

This book examines the major effects of perennial flooding on households living in Alajo, an informal suburb of Accra, the national capital of Ghana. In furtherance, it considers the factors that determine the coping strategies of households and then delve into the diverse coping strategies that have been adopted by the informal urbanites which have influenced their continual stay despite facing the risks of flooding every year. Floods are common events that confront many cities in the developing world. Ghana, a developing country, is persistently challenged with flood events, especially in its major cities. In informal Accra for instance, despite the severity of flood effects and its associated threats, poor informal residents continue to stay. As a result, these poor urban dwellers have developed local coping strategies made up of mitigation and reactive measures to manage and adapt to flood hazards through their preceding experiences. In this paper, we have embraced the Convergent Parallel Mixed Method of Case Study Design to echo and explore: (i) the major effects of preceding floods on informal households; ii) the local informal coping strategies adopted by households to mitigate and respond to flooding and its effects in the future; and iii) the determinants of the coping strategies of households which underpin their continual stay in spite of flood risks in Alajo, an urbanized suburb in Accra metropolis noted as one of the slum communities that easily floods in Ghana. Our analysis has used a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from both secondary and primary sources as well as a conceptualized model known as Disaster Resilience of Place (DROP). The key finding (Alajo has low degree of adaptive resilience to major floods which might occur in the future due to the lack of social learning in the coping strategies developed through several years of lessons learnt from perennial floods) and proposals (local coordination in implementing the coping strategies to flooding, state support of the local strategies and adoption of rainwater harvesting) also make contributions to managing urban floods in informal settlements in the developing world.

In 1998,"the flood of the century" covered more than two-thirds of Bangladesh, causing crop losses of 2.04 million tons of rice, an amount equal to 10.45 percent of target production in 1998/99. This flood threatened the health and lives of millions through food shortages caused by crop failure, loss of purchasing power, and the spread of water-borne disease. Yet very few flood-related deaths occurred, and reportedly none was due to food shortages. This report, based on data from a survey of 757 rural households in seven flood-affected regions (thanas) conducted in November and December 1998 and on analysis of secondary data on food grain markets, describes how Government of Bangladesh policy, well-functioning private markets, household coping strategies, and donor and NGO interventions combined to avert a major food crisis. To further enhance its food security, Bangladesh needs continued investments in agricultural research, extension, roads, electricity and other rural infrastructure, policies promoting efficient markets, and programs to provide targeted transfers and credit to poor households.

This book is a collection of twenty one papers presented during the symposium on Coping with Natural Hazards at University of Pune on 5 and 6 October 2001. This very successful symposium, organised by the National Academy of Sciences, outlined the strategies our country should adopt to be prepared to face hazards like earthquakes, floods, landslides, avalanches, cyclones, droughts and desertification. It contains papers by pre-eminent scientists and leading lights like Professors M G K Menon, P K Das, D R Sikka and R K Bhandari and many others. Each paper has been critically reviewed by atleast two experts in their respective fields.