Abstract:
Flooding is becoming more and more a big problem in the world that needs to be looked at
seriously. Flood cannot be stopped, but effort can be made to start thinking about how to live
with floods. The main objective of this study is to assess the flood resilience techniques put in
place by the community and stakeholders in Sebeya catchment. The research is based on a
participatory approach to assess the resilience techniques in place using Remote sensing and GIS
technologies to respectively identify exposure in the flood prone area, and map existing
resilience. The Sebeya flood prone area developed by the Ministry of Disaster and Refugees
through the Disaster Risk Atlas of Rwanda was used to identify area of study. A high spatial
resolution drone imagery superposed to the flood prone area was used to identify household
exposure to flood. ArcGIS software was used for image analysis, field data collection, data
analysis, visualisation and Flood Resilience Digital Interactive Map (FRDIM) development.
Focus Group Discussion was conducted to assess existing resilience techniques and map
proposed resilience strategies. A survey was done for all the households within identified
clusters flood prone. The findings show that in total 801constructions were found exposed to
flood with 93.7% highly exposed to flood. In terms of resilience, 74% of exposed houses have a
resilience technique in place. The resilience techniques that are popular are sand bags and trees
plantation. The existing resilience techniques are perceived to be non-efficient methods by the
population. Main proposed strategies are creation of artificial lake and deviation of Sebeya. An
integrated web application was developed to harness flood resilience real time reporting ; flood
resilience projects and techniques assessment and also as a tool for community participation in
donating their land for more open space along the river. In conclusion a sustainable flood
resilience in Sebeya requires the developemnt of engineering flood resilience methods for better
risk reduction and the use of integrated web application for better report and evaluation of flood
techniques implemented by the stakeholders and the community.
Key words: Flood Resilience, Participatory GIS, Digital Interactive map
