CITIZEN SCIENCE FOR MAPPING URBAN FLOODING HAZARD IN VILLA PAEZ NEIGHBORHOOD, CORDOBA, ARGENTINA

LOPEZ, SEBASTIAN; MASSÓ, LEANDRO; PORTIGLIATTI, ANDRES; KAZIMIERSKI, LEANDRO; DÍAZ LOZADA, JOSE; PATALANO, ANTOINE; RE, MARIANO; GARCIA, CARLOS M.

Paris

Conferencia; International Conference on Climate Risk, Vulnerability and Resilience Building; 2023

UNESCO

Among natural disasters, floods are the ones dangerous, causing mayor damage and that requirespecial attention, specially under the context of climate change and its effect on the frequencyof extreme events. Urban floods represent a significant challenge since more than half of world’spopulation lives in urban areas. The impact of extreme events is intensified by the vulnerabilityof civil society, due to their lack of awareness of the threat to which they are exposed. The SendaiRisk Reduction Framework proposes, within a series of public policies, those of empoweringcommunities, ensuring behavior change through science, evidence and effective communicationand increasing understanding of management of natural disasters and climate risk.There are few experiences in Argentina of urban floods hazards mapping projects in which theaffected community is involved in every phase of the process. A different approach for mappingurban flood´s hazards is needed, in which the inhabitants of the affected catchment can play animportant role in the study of the problem. Through understanding the hydrological system,collecting data, and working along with hydrological researchers, the community might increasethe awareness of the hazards they are expose to, and reduce their vulnerability to it. As well asempowering themselves for communicating with local authorities and claiming for betterconditions.This paper presents the results of a co-creative project of citizen participation with the objectiveof characterizing urban flooding´s hazard of a vulnerable community in the city of Córdoba,Argentina. A validated urban hydrology model with data and experiences provided by theaffected community is used, a criterion for the degree of threat is defined based on theprobability of occurrence of a meteorological event and the degree of danger according to thetype of person affected, to achieve a mapping of the pluvial threats to which the community isexposed. The mapping of the urban water hazards is transferred to the community throughpresentations in NGOs and schools located in the affected territory seeking to increase theresilience of the community and also transferred to the local authorities as a tool for the designof public policies.