The inclusion of communities as a strategy for reducing the risk of flood disasters: Project Anticipating the flood in the Matanza River Basin, eastern Argentina.

FEDERICO ARIEL ROBLEDO; DIEGO MOREIRA; CAMILA PRUDENTE; NADIA TESTANI; MARIANO RE; KAZIMIERSKI, LEANDRO DAVID; PAULA MICOU

Ginebra

Workshop; Weather and Society; 2022

Organización Meteorológica Mundial

In 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. Matanza is affected by floods, around 2 to 7 per year. 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 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. The interdisciplinary and intersectoral workshops with the local neighbors, local community, 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 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.