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 DAVID KAZIMIERSKI; ANA PAULA MICOU; IGNACIO GATTI

Ginebra

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

World Meteorological Organization

The problemOne of the priority actions of the Sendai framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 is to study disasterrisks in order to prevent and reduce their effects, focusing in two main actions at local and nationallevel:a) promote and improve the dialogue and cooperation among scientific communities, stakeholders andpolicymakers in order to facilitate the interface between science and policy to develop an effectivedecision-making in disaster risk management; and b) to incorporate the use of local knowledge andpractices, 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. Risksand/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 theimpacts related to extreme weather events is multi-causal, resulting in hazardous situations or disasterswhen there is a population affected, and severe alterations in the organization of the communitiesinvolved.The scienceThe challenge of science is the improvement of the development of products derived from numericalmodelling of the atmosphere and rivers and advance with the social validation and assimilation of theseproducts through local knowledge. In March 2013, the “​ Anticipando la Crecida​ ” team was created withnumerous participants and institutions of the Argentine scientific sector, and therefore workload anddiversity of tasks.The application to policy and practiceIn this study we develop and apply a methodology to improve the understanding of floods at theMatanza River basin, a rural-urban sub-basin of La Plata Basin, located in Buenos Aires, at the east ofArgentina. 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 7per year, especially in the lowest areas which are close to the river. Between 1,000 and 10,000 peoplewith high socio-economic vulnerabilityare usually evacuated between 5-14days any time a flood occurs. SinceNovember 2014, the interdisciplinaryteam of the Anticipando la Crecidaproject has maintained a sustaineddialogue with different local actorsfrom different localities in the city of LaMatanza to jointly understand the localearly warning system (EWS) in the faceof floods of the Matanza river and itstributaries.Toaddressthisunderstanding, the scientific-academicknowledge of different disciplines(meteorology,oceanography,geography,anthropologyandengineering) was combined with thelocal community knowledge ofdifferent actors in the localities of LaMatanza.Startingfromaninterdisciplinary approach focused onworking with Local Civil Defense (DC);teachers, students and directors ofschools that function as a center forevacuees; community organizationsand the Secretariat of Science andTechnology of La Matanza, investigatedsome of the devices for monitoring rainand river height, and knowledge of risk at a local scale, having among its main objectives to contribute tothe strengthening of the local early warning system. The analysis of knowledge of risk at the block scalein a neighborhood was carried out through participatory mapping workshops in the territory, field tripsin dry and flood situations. To organize and visualize the information co-produced with local actors inthe field work and workshops, the information was incorporated into the ​ Geoportal at the NationalGeographical Institute (IGN), whose objective is to produce geospatial information and make it availablefor 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 astream stage is installed. Given the lack of information on local rainfall, from the meetings with thedifferent local actors the initiative arises to co-design a community network for measuring rain, thus atthe 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 localreferents via cell phone was trained, becoming observers. In addition, in 2019 a new stream stage wasinstalled in a tributary of the Matanza river. In this way, the community monitoring network andknowledge of local risk provides robust social and hydro-meteorological information for local planning ofrisk 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 aswell as professionals of different national institutions, improved the communication among localcommunities, scientists, technical institutions and local authorities. This it helped to identify vulnerableregions where contingency plans have to improve and validate forecast tools. Thus, this projectproposes to build knowledge collectively, by incorporating the local community to the process ofgenerating knowledge. The strategy of working locally was more effective than addressing the problemat regional level because it has allowed incorporating the local community in the process of generationof tools to manage risk in their neighborhood, facilitating the ownership thereof. In this sense, weconsider the inclusion and work at local level is the best policy for disaster risk reduction. The socialvalidation of technical operational forecasting tools to anticipate flooding is necessary. This project hasreceived new sources of local funding to expand this type of activities to other districts.