Participatory mapping of flood hazard risk in Munamicua, District of Búzi, Mozambique

Abstract

Detailed maps, appropriate for decision making at the local level are outdated or currently not available in Mozambique. The community map presented in this paper is built on participatory mapping and Participatory GIS practices (especially photo mapping) and links to advanced spatial analysis in the context of disaster risk reduction and flood hazard assessment. Based on a very high-resolution satellite imagery, community members mapped different features such as the community boundary, settlement areas and their names, agricultural areas, important infrastructure and most importantly ‘low’ and ‘high risk’ zones for floods. It has been for the first time that a community was mapped in Mozambique in such a way integrating local knowledge. The identification of hazard zones in a participatory manner was seen as one way to overcome the bottleneck of limited available data for a proper GIS-based hazard modeling. Next to the digitization of the community mapped features, an image classification on land use, settlement areas (houses), and the integration of GPS collected points (infrastructure, photos) was carried out. In a final step the map was printed and handed-over to the community members. In the applied methodology it has been demonstrated that the assessment of risks through the integration of community knowledge and paper-based satellite images is valid. Next to the result of deriving a community-based hazard map, the process of mapping is understood as essential to sensitize and learn about local flood hazard risk.

Keywords:

• participatory GIS
• flood hazard mapping
• cartography
• indigenous knowledge
• vulnerability