Health impact evaluation of an urban flooding resilience framework in Dakar, Senegal
Project Abstract
Rapid urbanisation has been one of the defining phenomena of the twentieth century. In the developing world, much of the urban population finds themselves living in informal settlements with high levels of poverty and without access to basic services such as clean water and improved sanitation. This renders them vulnerable to climate extremes, such as urban floods, which can spread multiple diseases, threaten safety and security, interrupt schooling for children and cause massive losses of income and property. The ‘Vivre avec l’Eau │Live with Water’ Project builds resilience to flooding for 920’000 vulnerable people through an innovative, integrated and community-based approach. This approach incorporates interventions in three fields: infrastructure (floodwater evacuation and harvesting, decentralised sewerage treatment, solid waste management and urban gardening and greening); policy (district flood contingency plans and national policy advice); and capacity building (training and awareness building for beneficiaries and key stakeholders, with a special focus on empowering women).
The Health Impact Assessment is part of the research consortium that will accompany this large project with the ultimate objective to carry out a process and impact evaluation of the intervention. A household panel survey will be carried out to investigate a broad set of indicators that relate to resilience, socio-economic factors and health.
