By Kizito Makoye
In Summary
- Floods come every year to Tandale, one of Dar es Salaam's largest slums, but inadequate planning means the naturally occurring hazard often turns into a man-made disaster.
- Dubbed Ramani Huria (Swahili for “Open Mapping”), the project aims to help communities in slums create accurate maps of their localities, which can be used to reduce flood risks and improve response to disasters, officials said.
- The production of detailed datasets and collaboration with a separate Red Cross project to tackle flooding have led to the creation of local teams and plans for disaster preparedness and response in 10 of Dar es Salaam’s most flood-prone communities.
The sight of a drone hovering above the streets of Tandale
to map the crowded flood-prone neighbourhood in the north of Dar es
Salaam spread excitement among inhabitants tired of dealing with regular
inundations.
“I am happy to see something is being done to prevent flooding,” said 35-year-old resident Happy Malimbo.
With the help of drones, city authorities are drawing up plans
to protect and assist suburbs at risk of flooding like Tandale, offering
a glimmer of hope to those who live there.
Since 2013, Dar es Salaam City Council has worked with the World
Bank and other partners, including the Red Cross and the Open
Geospatial Consortium, to plot roads, streams and flood plains using
drones.
Dubbed Ramani Huria (Swahili for “Open Mapping”), the project
aims to help communities in slums create accurate maps of their
localities, which can be used to reduce flood risks and improve response
to disasters, officials said.
Floods come every year to Tandale, one of Dar es Salaam's
largest slums, but inadequate planning means the naturally occurring
hazard often turns into a man-made disaster.
Local people say they have repeatedly suffered losses due to flooding, which has also left hundreds without shelter.
“I lost most of my belongings as the flood water stormed into
the house in April this year,” said Malimbo, who has three children.
With almost 70 per cent of its inhabitants living in informal
settlements, Dar es Salaam is highly vulnerable to flooding, especially
in densely populated slum areas like Tandale.
Heavy rains fall twice a year, often resulting in severe floods
that force thousands of people from their homes and cause millions of
dollars’ worth of damage.
Community ownership
Juliana Letara, head of urban planning at Kinondoni Municipal
Council, said the Ramani Huria initiative had trained university
students and community members to identify and map areas mostly likely
to be hit by floods, enabling local authorities to take action in real
time.
Several wards in Tandale, in Kinondoni municipality, have been
mapped to create flood risk models, and a community resilience plan has
established evacuation routes.
“If you can trace where it floods, you can either install or
upgrade infrastructure to improve the situation for the people,” Letara
told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The production of detailed datasets and collaboration with a
separate Red Cross project to tackle flooding have led to the creation
of local teams and plans for disaster preparedness and response in 10 of
Dar es Salaam’s most flood-prone communities.
"Ramani Huria maps are user-friendly - they can be used by
people with any level of education,” said Letara. “The community feels a
sense of ownership over them because they were a part of the whole
process."
“Now we have a map - and a map is something important to start
with,” said Tandale Ward Officer Osiligi Lossai. “We can identify
different areas to restructure and improve. It is a roadmap for us to
set up new plans (and) to organise ourselves while involving the
community.”
Officials in Tandale are also using the maps to work out where flooding could trigger disease outbreaks.
“With these maps, it is easy to identify houses with known cholera patients and allow an efficient response,” said Lossai.
Cheap technology
Drones provide high-resolution, real-time imagery which is needed to develop exposure maps and model flood risk.
Frederick Mbuya, a World Bank consultant working with Tanzania's
Commission for Science and Technology, said drones are now a proven
technology to conduct aerial surveys for land mapping.
"The use of drones is much cheaper than many other traditional methods," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Kinondoni official Letara noted that drones can also help map
areas that cannot be reached on foot due to flooding, highlighting the
critical need for such a tool.
According to World Bank information officer Loy Nabeta, the data
captured so far in the most flood-prone areas of Dar es Salaam,
covering 1.3 million people, has been fed into publicly accessible
online tools such as OpenStreetMap and InaSAFE, which can be used by
communities.
Experts say most people who settle in flood-prone areas have
little choice because they are poor, even if they know their lives and
property are at risk.
As the rainy season does not last long, slum residents are
willing to live with the threat of floods, soon forgetting the misery
they cause, said Tandale resident Salum Kiponda.
But the Ramani Huria project could change the view that flooding is just something to be endured.
“We often don’t know when the floods will come, and what to do,
but this (new) information helps us know how to protect ourselves,” said
Malimbo.
-Thomson Reuters Foundation
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