Sharing workshop on good practices for Community Based Flood Early Warning System

Background:

Khado Khola in Saptari, Nepal is prone to flash floods impacting communities living along the river in Tilathi Koiladi Rural Municipality (TKRM), Rajbiraj Municipality and Rupani Rural Municipality. In early 2019, TKRM undertook the hands-on training on Community Based Flood Early Warning System (CBFEWS) organized by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Community-based flood early warning system helps communities utilize local resources and capacities to prepare and respond to and enhance their resilience to flooding risk. This system is installed in the river tributaries that have high flood risks and pose a threat to downstream communities. The upstream community generates the flood information using a simple low-cost instrument and disseminates real time early warning to the downstream communities, giving them sufficient lead time to prepare and respond.

Following the training, the municipality purchased and installed equipment with technical support from ICIMOD. The municipality also conducted community based risk and vulnerability assessments, created a communication chart and conducted mock drills in preparation for the 2019 floods. The CBFEWS has been effective in disseminating early warning messages to over 2600 households in the four most vulnerable villages of TKRM.

In addition to this, in a historic first, the upstream Rupani Rural Municipality, Rajbiraj Municipality and Tilathi Koiladi Rural Municipality, SABAL Nepal and ICIMOD have created a basket fund for ensuring the sustainability of the CBFEWS in the long run.

During this sharing workshop on Good practices for Community Based Flood Early Warning System participants from Nepal and India will get to observe the functioning of the CBFEWS, its impacts and discuss how such systems can be implemented in other flash flood prone rivers.

The objectives of the sharing workshop are:

• To observe good practices in the Tilathi Koiladi Rural Municipality
• To share good practices for CBFEWS, including making the system sustainable
• To discuss how such practices can be outscaled to other areas