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Integrated infrastructure system
An intelligent rainwater evacuation and harvesting system will divert rainwater into large drainage systems and collect water for use through an innovative urban space management concept involving urban greening and gardening, converting the damaging floodwaters into a public good.
To prevent the newly installed infrastructure from becoming clogged with rubbish, as is a common occurrence in projects that focus solely on water evacuation, a recycling and waste management programme will be implemented to reduce the amount of waste in the districts. This will ensure that the infrastructure can operate effectively and will also generate a sustainable source of income for members of the community.
A further significant health risk is posed during flooding when raw sewerage from household latrines mixes with floodwaters. De-centralised sewerage systems will eliminate the need for these household latrines, preventing the contamination of flood and drinking water.
Flood contingency plans
District flood contingency plans will support existing government flood response programmes. The project aims to strengthen the links between the national and community level. At the district level, this means that a local flood response plan will be developed, incorporating the results from topographic and GIS analyses of the terrain and the expertise of the community, so that problem areas can be identified in advance and necessary preparations can be made by the local community themselves.
This local flood contingency plan will also set out the procedures and contact persons responsible for responding to flooding. Mapping out the chain of response in the flooding situation will streamline communication between levels of government and the different organisations active in the flood response field. The flood contingency plans thus build on existing flood response systems in order to make local communities, policy-makers and national emergency response bodies better able to plan for and respond to urban flooding.
To prevent the newly installed infrastructure from becoming clogged with rubbish, as is a common occurrence in projects that focus solely on water evacuation, a recycling and waste management programme will be implemented to reduce the amount of waste in the districts. This will ensure that the infrastructure can operate effectively and will also generate a sustainable source of income for members of the community.
A further significant health risk is posed during flooding when raw sewerage from household latrines mixes with floodwaters. De-centralised sewerage systems will eliminate the need for these household latrines, preventing the contamination of flood and drinking water.
Capacity-building
The capacity-building component will ensure that the change initiated by both the infrastructure and policy components will be sustainable.
Community workshops will raise awareness of key aspects of flood prevention such as waste management and recycling. Technical workshops will provide the training necessary to assure the effective and sustainable implementation of the infrastructure and to promote flood-resilient urban planning. Policy workshops will ensure that the learning and best practices from the project are integrated into policy at all government levels.
In this way the project’s capacity-building approach looks beyond individuals and sees training as a tool to address broader questions of empowerment, public participation, leadership and institutional change.
Knowledge dissemination
In order to broaden and sustain the impact of the project on people’s resilience to climate extremes beyond those communities that are directly targeted, the project will gather and share lessons learnt and best practices and engage with relevant audiences.
This will be carried out in collaboration with research organisations, urban planning experts, policy-makers and the regional and international Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) community.