Paper short abstract:

The study aims to understand flood hazard and risk in order to address local community adaptation and resilience. It will explore relevant documents and records on Tana Delta flooding. It will apply landscape architecture theory and integrate concepts of vulnerability, adaptation and resilience.

Paper long abstract:

Hydro-meteorological disasters have contributed to over 90% of global disasters over the last two decades.Of these, flooding accounted for 47% affecting over 2.3 billion people. However, despite the strong societal impact of these natural hazards, their documentation remains incomplete and current climate models are still not good enough at producing local climate extremes. Recent studies on flooding have concluded that it is necessary to continue examination of updated records of flood related indices, trying to search for changes that influence flood hazard and flood risk in River basins.

According to UNITAR (2018), the critical flood zone on River Tana in Kenya was in Garsen/Tana Delta sub-county with 15900 hectares inundated and approximately 17,300 people affected. ICPAC flood hazard and risks map (2018) indicates deep to medium flooding in this area over the past 25 years. Shallow flood areas are also scattered in the area. Lower Tana flood plain provides a unique case to understand the delta flood landscape.

This study aims to understand flood hazard and risk in order to address local community adaptation and resilience. The preliminary study will explore relevant documents and records on Tana Delta flooding in order to understand the documented progression of hazard characteristics, environment and exposure before commencement of fieldwork. This entails understanding the components of hazard in the context of space and time. It will apply landscape architecture theory and integrate concepts of vulnerability, adaptation and resilience.