Assessment Of Flood Resilience Of Blantyre City Using Flood Resilience Index

Abstract

Floods rank the highest in frequency and impact of all natural hazards worldwide. They have to-date affected more than 2 billion people, the worst in cities owing to their high infrastructural economic values. Efforts to prevent and mitigate this challenge exist with the aim of building resilience to floods through flood risk management (FRM). The building of resilience to floods requires benchmarks in form of flood resilience metrics, which are phenomenal for efforts’ accountability and decision-making. This study was performed to assess resilience of Blantyre City in Southern Malawi to floods using flood resilience index (FRI), which employed a questionnaire and quantitative analyses. Prior to the assessment, the City’s urban dimensions were analysed using key informant interviews. In furtherance, flood resilience strategies were explored from a body of literature to highlight strategies suitable for the City’s flood risk management. Consequently, city dimensions were very low, where only 5/33-dimensional variables achieved at least 50% of best performance. The City’s FRI was at 1.97 (39.4%) representing very low flood resilience, according to FRI ratings. This showed that authorities and stakeholders such as Blantyre City Council needed to upscale their efforts to improve the City’s flood resilience. Flood resilience strategies explored from thirty-nine (39) sources turned out forty-nine (49) strategies suitable for Blantyre City, which we recommend its stakeholders to practise thereby enhancing the City’s resilience to floods.