Roving seminars on water cycle and floods

Since 2006, the World Meteorological Organization has been promoting the organization of Roving Seminars on Weather and Climate for Farmers in West and East Africa and in India (OMM, 2008) for drought risk management. The Roving Seminar involves entire communities of farmers in a one-day seminar with an exponential diffusion at local level. The contents of the RS are adapted to the local conditions (Stigter, 2007  and 2016).

Shifting from drought to flood community preparedness, in the framework of the Local Early Warning System for Floods of the Sirba River (SLAPIS) developed within the ANADIA2 (Adaptation to climate change and disaster risk reduction in agriculture for food security – phase 2) project implemented by IBE-CNR (Istituto per la BioEconomia – Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), DIST (Politecnico e Università di Torino) and National Directorate of Meteorology (DMN-Niger) we adapted the concept of Roving Seminars to the hydrological risks.

The main objective is strengthening communities’ self-reliance in dealing with floods and other extreme hydrometeorological risks. The seminars take the form of a one-day meeting in a village, which the whole community is invited to attend. The objective is to make communities become more self-reliant in dealing with hydrometeorological issues related to floods that affect human life, habitat, assets, livestock and crops, and to increase the interaction between the community and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services.  Moreover, the seminars increase the interaction between the local communities and local technical services, building trust, and confidence.

The seminars are organized in two parts. The first focuses on weather, climate, and hydrology of the region, particularly on the relation between rainfall and discharge on the whole river basin and on local sub-basins. The aspects of change in land-use/land-cover and changes in hydrological processes are also well developed in order to promote better comprehension of the dynamics in which farmers are a key actor. The second part of the day focuses on the communities’ perception of weather and hydrological information/alerts provided by SLAPIS. The main objective is to obtain feedback from the communities by a free and frank exchange of ideas and information. This part of the seminar is designed to engage all the participants in discussions and obtain suggestions on additional information and the ways and means to improve future communication to facilitate effective operational decision making.

A Roving Seminar on water cycle and floods was carried on in Tallé, Niger, a riverside locality of the Sirba river on 30 June 2020. 

The Seminar was organized by the National Directorates for Meteorology and Hydrology in collaboration with the municipality of Gotheye. Villagers, representatives of the local administration and the traditional chiefdom, grassroots organizations, and producers participated in the seminar.

Among different approaches used during the seminar, visualization is the one that has been preferred to aid the perception of flood warning levels. In the context of SLAPIS Roving Seminars, visualization includes:

1. the adoption of the four-colors classification for flood scenarios. They are associated with warnings content (the core of the message is the color). Colors are related to discharge, return periods and impacts on the main riverine settlements, basically green for the normal condition as a no-impact scenario, yellow (Stationary Return Period 10 years) for minor impacts, orange (Stationary Return Period 30 years) for significant impacts and red (Stationary Return Period 100 years) for severe impacts.

2. the installation of colored hydrometric staff gauges (qualitative gauging staffs) installed along the river aiming to increase awareness of the flood risk among communities by showing the levels of the hazard thresholds and to establish a local communication system from upstream to downstream villages;

3. the installation of information panels in the villages indicating priority actions to be taken according to the four-colors classification;

4. the realization of an illustrated flip chart (pagivolte) describing with simple illustrations the main steps of the water cycle, including related risks and the instructions in the event of an alert (according to the color).

The seminar allowed:

populations, villagers, SCAP-RU (Local Early Warning and Emergency Response System) and observers of the colored gauges to understand the concepts of floods, flash floods, rain, runoff, risk, exposure, hazards, climate change, etc. and the essential concepts for a good understanding of flood phenomena;

populations to understand how forecasts and alerts are made and to know the chain and channels for transmitting the alert;

population to understand what vigilance and prevention tools are available to them;

SLAPIS actors to know the perception of the local populations and stakeholders towards the system put in place and to identify subsequent actions to improve the system.

Photo and video documentation on the seminar and the alert system was produced including:

• Interviews with different stakeholders (mayors / scale observers / osv and scap-ru);
• Photo and video of the seminar;
• Photo and video of the Sirba River, colored gauges and hydrometers.