Assessing Community resilience and adaptation strategies to flooding in Mbale city.

Abstract

With the ever changing and continuous climate change, flooding continues to be one of the most widely spread natural calamity. However, with flooding in place, a number of key strategies have been put in place to mitigate the effects of flooding with elevating structures being the most effective followed by emergency response, adoption of good farming methods, land use planning, desilting river beds, relocation, risk assessment, riverbank restoration, community engagement and outreach, structural rehabilitation and proper waste management. While mapping flood risk areas, it was observed that the areas susceptible to floodings were mainly made up of agricultural lands that were over cultivated. Those close to the streams and in low-lying areas had a high chance of being hit by flooding. Based on the results for community resilience assessment, Exposure to risk was identified as the key determinant of community resilience. Therefore, it influences the level of community resilience in a way that, the more the exposure to risk, the more the resilience and the lesser the exposure, the lower the level of community resilience. However, other important determinants included; age, gender, level of education, attitude, risk perception, knowledge, health status and level of income and these were key factors that determine community resilience in response to an adverse condition which is flooding.