From flood risk mapping toward reducing vulnerability: the case of Addis Ababa

This paper investigates how these maps can be used in complicated urban context such as developing countries, where engineers are forced to work with scarce or little data. Specifically, a detailed investigation on the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has been conducted. Although the city of Addis Ababa is undergoing extensive formal housing development, it is most likely that the informal settlements will continue to constitute a significant portion of urban housing landscape in the years to come.

Recent research findings and field work from a large project (FP7-CLUVA) are employed in order to provide a quantified basis for decision-making between alternative adaptation strategies for informal buildings in Addis Ababa. Risk maps, obtained by up-scaling more accurate risk assessment results at neighborhood level, are adopted for risk zoning of the urban residential texture within the city. This provides risk-based criteria for both identifying suitable flood adaptation strategies and prioritizing between viable risk mitigation measures.