Towards Risk-Sensitive and Transformative Urban Development in Sub Saharan Africa

Diversified flood governance and related socio-spatial vulnerability in Tana River County, Kenya

What are the consequential socio-spatial vulnerabilities of fragmentation in flood risk governance (FRG) functions in Tana River County, Kenya? To answer the question, this paper utilises social differentiation theory to establish types and consequences of such fragmentation. It applies theoretical patterns and processes of social differentiation to expose that FRG diversification could result in fragmentation of FRG functions. The study employs an interview strategy that focuses on governmental and non-governmental FRG actors. The results reveal that fragmented FRG functions in Tana River County was not an intentional policy decision, but rather a product of a transitional vacuum between policy promulgation and implementation. Furthermore, socio-spatial vulnerabilities differentiated by patterns and processes related to age, gender, disability, and ethnicity, for instance, are consequential outcomes of fragmented FRG functions in the Tana River floodplains. The study recommends implementation of the National Disaster Management Policy in Tana River County and institutionalisation of a specific FRG policy and legal framework.

Transformation towards Risk-Sensitive Urban Development: A Systematic Review of the Issues and Challenges

Risk-sensitive urban development is an innovative planning approach that can transform the way cities are built in order to face the uncertainties that arise from climate-induced disaster risks. However, the potential to initiate such a transformative approach has not materialized because of the many underlying issues that need to be understood properly. Therefore, this study conducted a systematic review to gather empirical evidence on the issues and challenges in implementing risk-sensitive urban development. The study identified forty-six issues and challenges under seven key themes that need addressing in order to facilitate the desirable transition: trade-offs, governance, fragmentation and silos, capacity, design and development, data, and funding. The issues and challenges that exist under trade-offs for negotiating solutions for risk-sensitive urban development and the governance of multiple stakeholders were identified as the top two areas that need attention in facilitating the desirable transition. This study also revealed that important information, such as scientific information, hazard and risk information, temporal and spatial information, and critical local details are not being produced and shared between stakeholders in decision-making. A profound participatory process that involves all the stakeholders in the decision-making process was identified as the pathway to ensure equitable outcomes in risk-sensitive urban development.

Data Sources for Understanding the Social Determinants of Health: Examples from Two Middle-Income Countries: the 3-D Commission

The expansion in the scope, scale, and sources of data on the wider social determinants of health (SDH) in the last decades could bridge gaps in information available for decision-making. However, challenges remain in making data widely available, accessible, and useful towards improving population health. While traditional, government-supported data sources and comparable data are most often used to characterize social determinants, there are still capacity and management constraints on data availability and use. Conversely, privately held data may not be shared. This study reviews and discusses the nature, sources, and uses of data on SDH, with illustrations from two middle-income countries: Kenya and the Philippines. The review highlights opportunities presented by new data sources, including the use of big data technologies, to capture data on social determinants that can be useful to inform population health. We conducted a search between October 2010 and September 2020 for grey and scientific publications on social determinants using a search strategy in PubMed and a manual snowball search. We assessed data sources and the data environment in both Kenya and the Philippines. We found limited evidence of the use of new sources of data to study the wider SDH, as most of the studies available used traditional sources. There was also no evidence of qualitative big data being used. Kenya has more publications using new data sources, except on the labor determinant, than the Philippines. The Philippines has a more consistent distribution of the use of new data sources across the HEALTHY determinants than Kenya, where there is greater variation of the number of publications across determinants. The results suggest that both countries use limited SDH data from new data sources. This limited use could be due to a number of factors including the absence of standardized indicators of SDH, inadequate trust and acceptability of data collection methods, and limited infrastructure to pool, analyze, and translate data.

A spectrum of methods for a spectrum of risk: Generating evidence to understand and reduce urban risk in sub-Saharan Africa

Many African towns and cities face a range of hazards, which can best be described as representing a "spectrum of risk" of events that can cause death, illness or injury, and impoverishment. Yet despite the growing numbers of people living in African urban centres, the extent and relative severity of these different risks is poorly understood. This paper provides a rationale for using a spectrum of methods to address this spectrum of risk, and demonstrates the utility of mixed-methods approaches in planning for resilience. It describes activities undertaken in a wide-ranging multi-country programme of research, which use multiple approaches to gather empirical data on risk, in order to build a stronger evidence base and provide a more solid base for planning and investment. It concludes that methods need to be chosen in regard to social, political economic, biophysical and hydrogeological context, while also recognising the different levels of complexity and institutional capacity in different urban centres. The paper concludes that as well as the importance of taking individual contexts into account, there are underlying methodological principles - based on multidisciplinary expertise and multi-faceted and collaborative research endeavours - that can inform a range of related approaches to understanding urban risk in sub-Saharan Africa and break the cycle of risk accumulation.

Agent-Based Modelling for Simulation-Based Design of Sustainable Faecal Sludge Management Systems

Re-using faecal sludge (FS) to generate value has the potential to contribute towards solving the issue of long term sanitation solutions in growing urban areas across sub-Saharan Africa; however, hitherto, no design tools have been available that are capable of simulating a system involving economic factors, complex social issues and environmental circumstances. We hypothesized that Agent-Based Modelling (ABM), when deployed with appropriate rigour, can provide such a tool. Extensive field work was carried out in a Malawian city, investigating the adoption of Skyloo above-ground composting toilets by households, and the operation of the municipal FS site. 65 semi-structured interviews and 148 household interviews, together with observations, were carried out to characterize these processes, with the data acquired being used to construct two separate ABMs. The Skyloo ABM was run for various scenarios of start-up capital for business and payback of loans against the toilet cost to households. The municipal FS Site ABM was run for different patterns of dumping fee and enforcement structure. The field work demonstrated that there is potential for further expansion of FS reuse, with a market for agricultural application. The Skyloo ABM identified the significance of start-up capital for a business installing the toilet technology; the municipal FS Site ABM showed that existing fees, fines and regulatory structure were insufficient to reduce illegal dumping of FS to any useful degree, but that a monthly permit system would provide enhanced revenue to the city council compared with per-visit charging of disposal companies at the municipal FS site. Whilst each ABM ideally requires some additional data before full application, we have, for the first time, shown that ABM provides a basis for the simulation-based design of FS management systems, including complex social, economic and environmental factors.