Assessing Community Coping Strategies in Sustainable Flood Management. A Case Study of Kaemibre and Walantu in Kasoa Municipality, Ghana

Abstract

Community based flood management has become fundamental in increasing societies’ resilience to flooding. As climate change and urbanization continue to worsen flood disaster events, it is practical to examine local adaptation to floods. To achieve this objective, multi criteria analysis, using Geographic Information System and Digital Elevation Model for flood modelling and risk mapping assessment, buttressed by questionnaires, was employed to evaluate human relationship and response to flood risks management. A landuse map of Satellite remote sensing Level 1B satellite images from Landsat ETM Plus for the month of October 2018 was created, using Environment for Visualising Images Software and Geographic Information System for estimating changes in the land cover during the modelling process. The most affected communities were defined from the overlay of the risk map on the topographic map of the same scale. It was revealed that even though flood risk map shows communities’ risk of flooding, socio-economic and cultural factors play major role in flood risk management. The coping strategies of the affected communities involved bolstering walls and increasing compound elevation above flood level, desilting drains, and changing jobs. The study recommends the integration of flood hazard maps into sustainable flood management of communities