Visualize and communicate extreme weather risk to improve urban resilience in Malawi

Abstract

Since the last century, an unprecedented settlement expansion, mainly generated by an extraordinary world population growth, has made urban communities always more exposed to disasters. Casualties and economic impacts due to hydro-meteorological hazards are dramatically increasing, especially in developing countries. Although the scientific community is currently able to provide innovative technologies to accurately forecast severe weather events, scientific products are often not easily comprehensible for local stakeholders and more generally for decision makers. On the other hand the integration of different layers, such as hazard, exposed assets or vulnerability through GIS, facilitates the risk assessment and the comprehension of risk analysis. This work presents a methodology to enhance urban resilience through the integration into a GIS of satellite-derived precipitation data and geospatial reference datasets. Through timely and meaningful hydro-meteorological risk information, this methodology enables local government personnel and decision makers to quickly respond and monitor natural phenomena that could impact on the local community. This methodology is applied to the January 2015 Malawi Flood case study and result will be discussed along with further recommended developments.