LocationsA community flood early warning systems project
Flood Ready: Building Community Flood Resilience
Flooding events occur frequently in Trinidad and Tobago and is a natural disaster that has resulted in extensive socio-economic losses. The most recent major flood of October 2018 affected 150,0000 persons and significantly impacted the livelihoods of the agricultural community.
Project Goals:
To strengthen community and national capacities for generating flood early warnings and effectively planning and executing anticipatory actions to reduce loss of life, minimize displacement and poverty. . This will be done through:
- Enhancing capacity for detecting, monitoring, analysing and forecasting of flood hazards
- Expanding flood early warning information communication/ dissemination platform
- Strengthening of coordination and management of floods at the community and national levels
- Improving emergency response capacities in a crisis
Direct Benfits to the Communities
1. Investments of monitoring equipment (rainfall and streamflow stations) within the beneficiary communities
2. Increased reliability of data on localised rainfall, river level and flood risks; including flood alerts and warnings
3. Enhanced community capacity to identify flood hazards and the contributing factors that increase flood risk
4. Increased capacity to plan early actions to protect lives, livelihoods and property
5. Enhanced capacity to coordinate the initial community response to flooding and communicate with State responder .
Primary Success Indicators
- The number of people covered by a functional flood early warning system
- The number of people reached through information, education and communication on disaster risk reduction
- The number of people participating in interventions that enhance their capacity to face shocks and stress
Seven communities across Trinidad and Tobago were targeted, 5 in Trinidad and 2 in Tobago; Couva Caroni, Maraval (upper and lower), Cunupia, Papourie, Diego Martin, Crooks River and Bacolet River. These communities were chosen as they were determined to be highly susceptible to flooding, populated and/or have agriculture subsistence activities, had no streamflow stations or rainfall gauges installed and many were among the poorest.
Currently, the project has achieved the targets across all components of the project. This includes:
Component 1 includes: the installation and commissioning of seven (7) stream gauges. Training key personnel in national agencies in flood modelling and mapping and the completion of a gender and age analysis report on the seven (7) communities.
Component 2 includes: Installation of three (3) antennas across Trinidad and Tobago. The CFEWS website (www.floodwarnings.gov.tt) was registered and is publicly accessible, displaying stream gauges and rainfall stations. The public education and awareness campaign is completed and consisted of development of signage, project design, fact sheets, outreach, interviews, and panel discussions on national television.
Component 3 achieved training 210 persons in CERT and CHO. The Interagency Coordinating Mechanism Report is completed, and the interagency coordination is improved and functional.
Outputs
- Analysis of the effects of flooding disaggregated by gender and age
- Flood models and maps
- Community rainfall and flood monitoring stations
- National public awareness campaign on flood hazards
- Advanced flood warning information
- Coordination and management plan for flood hazards
