Interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge construction of floods events between the scientific sector and the local community, at the Matanza River in eastern Argentina

FEDERICO ARIEL ROBLEDO; DIEGO MOREIRA; NADIA TESTANI; CAMILA PRUDENTE; VERÓNICA DANKIEWICZ; MARIANO RE; LEANDRO KAZIMIERSKI; MICOU, ANA PAULA; GATTI, IGNACIO AGUSTIN

Ginebra

Workshop; The High-Impact Weather (HIWeather); 2020

World Meteorological Organization

The problemOne of the priority actions of the Sendai framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 is to study disaster risks in order to prevent and reduce their effects, focusing in two main actions at local and national level: a) promote and improve the dialogue and cooperation among scientific communities, stakeholders and policymakers in order to facilitate the interface between science and policy to develop an effective decision-making in disaster risk management; and b) to incorporate the use of local knowledge and practices, as appropriate, to complement scientific knowledgement in disaster risk assessment, developing a cross-sectoral approach, which should be tailored to localities and to the context. Risks and/or disasters arise from the interaction between weather and climate extremes on the one hand, and social vulnerability and its distribution in the territory on the other. Therefore, the severity of the impacts related to extreme weather events is multi-causal, resulting in hazardous situations or disasters when there is a population affected, and severe alterations in the organization of the communities involved.The scienceThe challenge of science is the improvement of the development of products derived from numerical modelling of the atmosphere and rivers and advance with the social validation and assimilation of these products through local knowledge. In March 2013, the ?Anticipando la Crecida? team was created with numerous participants and institutions of the Argentine scientific sector, and therefore workload and diversity of tasks.The application to policy and practiceIn this study we develop and apply a methodology to improve the understanding of floods at the Matanza River basin, a rural-urban sub-basin of La Plata Basin, located in Buenos Aires, at the east of Argentina. For that, since 2014 we have been in a permanent dialogue among atmosphere science, oceanography and hydrology scientific community, stakeholders and citizens of Laferrere District.Laferrere is located in the middle of the La Matanza River basin. It is affected by floods, around 2 to 7 per year, especially in the lowest areas which are close to the river. Between 1,000 and 10,000 people with high socio-economic vulnerability are usually evacuated between 5-14 days any time a flood occurs. Since November 2014, the interdisciplinary team of the Anticipando la Crecida project has maintained a sustained dialogue with different local actors from different localities in the city of La Matanza to jointly understand the local early warning system (EWS) in the face of floods of the Matanza river and its tributaries. To address this understanding, the scientific-academic knowledge of different disciplines (meteorology, oceanography, geography, anthropology and engineering) was combined with the local community knowledge of different actors in the localities of La Matanza. Starting from an interdisciplinary approach focused on working with Local Civil Defense (DC); teachers, students and directors of schools that function as a center for evacuees; community organizations and the Secretariat of Science and Technology of La Matanza, investigated some of the devices for monitoring rain and river height, and knowledge of risk at a local scale, having among its main objectives to contribute to the strengthening of the local early warning system. The analysis of knowledge of risk at the block scale in a neighborhood was carried out through participatory mapping workshops in the territory, field trips in dry and flood situations. To organize and visualize the information co-produced with local actors in the field work and workshops, the information was incorporated into the Geoportal at the National Geographical Institute (IGN), whose objective is to produce geospatial information and make it available for access to all citizenship through a web platform. To monitor the level of the La Matanza River, since December 2018, after each rain event, DC takes measurements at the Ricchieri Highway bridge where a stream stage is installed. Given the lack of information on local rainfall, from the meetings with the different local actors the initiative arises to co-design a community network for measuring rain, thus at the beginning of 2019 manual rain gauges operated by the community are installed in different areas. The community that will carry out the measurement and share the daily rainfall data in a group of local referents via cell phone was trained, becoming observers. In addition, in 2019 a new stream stage was installed in a tributary of the Matanza river. In this way, the community monitoring network and knowledge of local risk provides robust social and hydro-meteorological information for local planning of risk management by the communities.Did it make a difference? The interdisciplinary and intersectoral workshops with the local neighbours, local stakeholders, professors, researchers and students of meteorology, oceanography, social sciences, and engineers as well as professionals of different national institutions, improved the communication among local communities, scientists, technical institutions and local authorities. This it helped to identify vulnerable regions where contingency plans have to improve and validate forecast tools. Thus, this project proposes to build knowledge collectively, by incorporating the local community to the process of generating knowledge. The strategy of working locally was more effective than addressing the problem at regional level because it has allowed incorporating the local community in the process of generation of tools to manage risk in their neighborhood, facilitating the ownership thereof. In this sense, we consider the inclusion and work at local level is the best policy for disaster risk reduction. The social validation of technical operational forecasting tools to anticipate flooding is necessary. This project has received new sources of local funding to expand this type of activities to other districts.