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Development of a flood risk monitoring system to support flood risk reduction through community-driven drainage cleaning and drain adoption(Twaa Mtaro) in Dar es salaam city.

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Development of a flood risk monitoring system to support flood risk reduction through community-driven drainage cleaning and drain adoption(Twaa Mtaro) in Dar es salaam city.
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Dar es Salaam, the primary city of Tanzania is highly vulnerable to flooding even from minor Storms, floods in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2015, caused loss of life,injury, and severely impacted diverse sectors. Dar es Salaam’s flooding problems are largely a function of inadequate storm drainage and poor waste disposal practices rather than being driven exclusively by only extreme rainfall. To reduce flood risk through improved management of drain infrastructure The World Bank Tanzania funded the development of a flood risk monitoring system(Twaa Mtaro) to engage communities in drain clean ups, to facilitate community reporting on blockages affecting the flood risk of local drainage systems and provide municipalities with relevant data related to drain cleaning activities. The development of Twaa Mtato as a web application started May 2017 however the initial co-debase was forked from Chicago-based website for collecting and displaying resident submissions around snow emergencies called adopt-sidewalk. Twaa Mtaro core is based on ruby on rails, uses postgres/postgis for data storage and leaflet for map visualization, all geospatial data(drains data) was prepared using QGIS.
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
Okay, for the next presentation, we have Edgar Mlewe from the World Bank Tanzania and he's going to talk about flood risk management in the city of Dar Es Salaam.
Thank you very much. Today I'm very happy to share with everyone how we did in creating a platform that engaged the community in drain cleaning.
So today I'll be talking about the development of a flood risk monitoring system to support a flood risk reduction through community driven drain energy cleaning and drain adaption in Dar Es Salaam city.
Dar Es Salaam is a primary city of Tanzania and it is expected to become a mega city in a few years to come, but it is impacted by flooding, sometimes even with minor rains and storms.
The main cause is not necessarily heavy rains, but mostly inadequate drains, poor disposal and poor urban planning. So what you see here, this image shows one of the flooding impacts that happened, but several ones happened like in 2019, 2011, 2014 and 2015.
All those years there have been floods and people were affected, also the economy was being impacted at large.
So to reduce the flood risk, the World Bank funded the development of this platform, we call it from Taro, it's an Israeli word, in English we say adopt a drain. So before the development, mapping activities were done to collect all data of the drains for the Dar Es Salaam
city and that was done by a project called the Dar Es Salaam Ramanouria, so in English it is open maps. So Dar Es Salaam Ramanouria collected all the drain data for Dar Es Salaam city and it is as you can see from the imaging.
So mostly that data was collected through community mapping, actually community members and university students played a great role in collecting such data.
So using that data and our local expertise, we were able to define the problem. So actually the focus was to reduce floods and increase the resilience and this problem affected vulnerable people and the economy.
Mostly those people who live in slums or those people who live in a very low economy, they were the most impacted. And also the social cultural factors which shaped this problem were actually the complex problems in solid university
management, the economic key citizen behaviors towards solid university management and also lack of resources for adequate emergency response. Also there have been enough evidence to show that this problem really exists. There have been casualties in recent evidence as I mentioned, also city operations were being impacted.
So we tried to frame the problem, we tried to look at it at another angle and to say how can we focus in enhancing communication between communities and emergency
stakeholders of which in Dar Es Salaam are the municipalities who normally help during emergency. So the communities at the lower level and the municipalities at the higher level. So we are looking for a way to enhance communication between these two extremes.
And we are focusing on how to support the public authorities or the municipalities to be able to know at any point in time what is the status of a draining cleanliness in Dar Es Salaam. And also what are the most critical areas that need to be cleaned.
As you can see, normally the municipalities were using maps and the map you see is also part of the project of Dar Emanurea. They have been creating those kind of maps and the municipalities were using them to make decisions.
But as you can see the map as static data is not dynamic so we need a way to make this data more rich so that it could help to make decisions. And also the community who are largely impacted by floods, they kept wondering like they are not causing the problem then where does it come from.
Even though they are doing maybe poor waste disposal but still when the flood comes they have someone to blame, they say maybe the government. And also they were looking on a way how can the municipalities help them to clean drains. They can do cleanliness themselves but at some point they need help from the municipalities so how can they reach the municipalities.
So based on a little story that I have been talking about, so the idea of Tromtalo or Adopted Drain was born. So Tromtalo is a flood risk monitoring system that aims at facilitating, collection, dissemination and action on local drainage information.
As you can see local people in the streets, they are doing cleanliness but you need a way to centralize that data at one place so that other people can easily see.
So people are doing cleanliness in different places like the Dalsaram city and then we collect that data, we put it on one platform. So at any point in time a person can visit this site, can visit this platform and be able to see the status of drain cleanliness for the whole city.
So if it is approaching the lane season it is easy to make a decision on which areas to focus with and make sure you clean the critical areas. So technically this is how Tromtalo looks like and that is the landing page.
So the map you see contains all drains for the Dalsaram city and the drains are colored based on their status as you can see. So a green color shows that it is clean. Actually they are labeled. I hope you can see. I am not very good in colors too.
But this dashboard shows a summary of the status of all drains you can see. Like how many drains need help, how many are dirty, how many are clean, how many have been adopted and how many have not been adopted.
No one is looking at them. So we believe centralizing drain information which is very critical in causing flood. We believe it could help in managing emergence especially to mitigate, to support community cleaning.
It is easy to know where are the problems when you have enough data centralized in one place and it is also easy to know when do we need to clean. Also it connects the communities with the public authorities.
The communities are doing cleanliness then they are reporting the cleanliness status by using our platform and then the municipalities can easily visit the platform and know where in the city help is being needed.
Also during preparedness this platform could also support to prioritize early warning action letting the community and even understanding the status of community cleaning.
I would also like to welcome my colleague to take you through some features of Tromtalo or adapted drain. Good afternoon. My name is Bitri Simcombo. I'm a software consultant at World Bank and I was a lead front-end developer on this platform.
I'm going to take you through a little bit faster because the minute is almost over. As you can see on the platform, when a person comes first on the platform, what he can see, how she can see is all drain in direct slum.
And we found this, it will be easy, it will be hard for someone to select maybe which area is he staying or whatever. So we decided to add another feature that user can... Okay. Ten minutes. Okay. I can go a little bit slow.
Okay. We implemented another feature that shows the street user can go to the platform and select which street is he or she belongs like you can see over there.
A user can type and select maybe from this street and you can only view few drains of your street. And as my colleague mentioned earlier, the drain has been labeled according to the status.
Like blue ones are the drains that need help. The green ones are the drains that are clean. Orange ones are the drain which is not clean. When user click to the one drain, she or he can see some detail about that drain.
Like when you can see over there, I think it explains itself that the drain is clean or not clean. This is clean because as you can see the color code is green and it indicates that the drain is clean. And we decided to put it this way so that any person who can come and visit our platform can view a little bit summary about the drain.
But if you want to adapt the drain, you have to do some other activity to the platform because you cannot adapt the drain if you are not registered to the platform. And there when we come to introduce the function, I mean the, let's say it's a function, I'm a developer so I cannot put it in a good way,
of registering user and when user registered, she or he can be able to adapt the drain and to do other functionality in the platform.
One of the functionality that can be done in the platform is like maybe I'm staying at a certain place and in front of my house there is a drain passing through and I'm supposed to adapt the drain. How can I adapt the drain? This is when we came and implemented that feature.
When you register, you can adapt the drain and if you adapt the drain, you can view all drain that you have been adapted. As you can see there, it's Edgar Malloy has been adapted a certain drain. On that left side you can see all your drain has been, you have been adapted. We are allowing user to adapt more than one drain. You can adapt as many drain
as you can and you can also add another person to help you to clean your drain. If you feel like my drain is a little bit hard for me to clean by myself, I can choose another person to help me on cleaning the drain. On the left side, the last button is where you can click and add someone you want to help you to clean the drain.
After finalizing to clean the drain, you are allowed to click to say like my drain is already cleaned, like changing the status of the drain,
because at first your drain will be dirty, but when you're finalizing cleaning the drain and the world leader or local street leader came and approved like yes, he has been cleaning the drain, you can go to a platform and submit that I have been cleaned the drain.
And also there's a lot of features on this platform because we are Tanzanian, we speak Swahili and most of people, most of people which are going to use this platform, they are local people, so we decided to put a Swahili way. You can see on this side that you can choose on changing the language.
If you don't know Swahili, you can use English or you can use Swahili, but most of us prefer to use Swahili because that is our local language. And I think I can welcome again my colleague to finalize some stuff.
I would like to use this last amenity to just share a little bit about the success and challenges when you build this platform. We were able to train 20 plus street leaders, world leaders. We faced some challenges, especially because of smartphone penetration.
As you can see through this platform, you need to have a smartphone that has a browser, so that was a little bit of challenges. And also you may find a street leader as a smartphone, but they are not very good at browsing the internet.
So the idea was to build a USSD version of Tomtaro so that people could use featured phones and still be able to report the status of the trains. As you can see, the platform is responsive. You can access it via mobile phone and PC. Thank you very much for listening. We are very happy to present this to you.
Thank you. What's the motivation for people to assign to your service and use this compared to just ringing the neighbor and organizing some local event for cleaning the system?
Sorry, can you repeat again? What's the motivation for people to sign to your system, to your application and use it compared to talking to neighbors?
Do you find it's easier for them to sign and find some people to help? Okay, thank you. A very nice question. The motivation behind people using our platform is Calitree, Ever Street in Tanzania.
If you are living in a place and the drain is passed in front of you, you have to contribute for cleaning the drain. You have to pay. Sometimes you may find your drain is, I can say, the depth of the drain
is very small, so you need the government to support you to make it more deeper. So you need help. But to ask help from the municipalities, it was very difficult. So through this platform, it is easy to report on this platform that my drain needs help. And the other person, the next house, must report that this drain needs help. So it is easy to get help in that way.
So the motivation is actually connecting the communities to the public authorities so that they can easily be supported.
Maybe I missed the beginning, but where are we getting the data from? The data of the geometry? We are getting the data from Daramanuria. They are the ones who are mapping all the drainage in Daraslam.
Yes, and to add more on that is Daramanuria collected that data and then they shared them with us in a shapefile. So we used QGIS and PostGIS. Actually, we converted that shapefile into a database, a PostGIS database, and then we are using PostGIS to load that data.
I was wondering, do you have a sort of time slide to see how things are changing in the reporting of the people?
How things are going better or worse to see the changes of the status of the channels? Thank you. There is a possibility when you view details of one drain to see the history of drain.
But we don't have the time slider and we think that feature is very important. In the next version, we will include it. I have a small question. My colleague already took part of my question and I will make it shorter. Do you think that your work is helping to solve the flooding problems in Daraslam or is it just cosmetic?
Because I am a geographer and I already work about the flooding situation in town and you have to take a lot of parameters in consideration to solve the flooding problems.
Most of the time, the problem is based on the quality of the soil or the quantity of the rain or the slope, the elevation. You have a lot of parameters. But what is the output of your work? Did it solve something in Daraslam?
Thank you. First of all, I would like to stress where we stand on this platform. For us, our main focus is to make sure that there is good data so that decision makers can act on it.
So without this platform, if you go to Daraslam, it is very hard, for instance, for a regional commissioner to know which municipal needs more money so that we can do cleanliness. So in Daraslam, there are some municipal which face flood and there are others which don't.
But to have that data on the table easily is not easy. So by this platform, we just collect cleanliness data and we centralize it. Then what the municipalities can do with it, we leave it to them.
I want to ask about mobile application. Is it available also for offline use or you need to be connected to the internet? Or what's the connection to the internet there for mobile phones? Is it ok coverage? Ok, so that is the part we need to improve to make it offline first. But currently it is just responsive.
You can use it on your mobile phone, but without internet or in a low internet connection, it is a little bit of a challenge. But we are thinking on making it more offline first. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.