First annual meeting of the FURIFLOOD project

The official launch of the implementation of FURIFLOOD was held at the Univertity of Lome from 25 to 28 April 2022
 

Technical Session

During the first two days (25 and 26 April), the technical session of the first annual meeting of the Furiflood project began with the welcome words of Prof Kokou of the University of Lomé, coordinator of the project in Africa. He is followed by Prof Fink from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, coordinator of the project in Germany who presented the context of the meeting and the objectives of the project. After highlighting the recurrence of floods in the continental and coastal areas of West Africa, the presenter focused on the cases of Niger, Ghana, Benin and Togo during the period 2010 – 2019 with revealing illustrations including the results of the last IPCC report before emphasazing the need for a multidisciplinary project involving among others, meteorology, hydrology and risk assessment. Thus, the project aims to generate scientific knowledge on current and future climate extremes related to floods in West Africa and integrate them into case studies to better understand flood risks in order to develop strategies to reduce them through a participatory approach.

General partner introduction

A total of nine (09) presentations were made by the members of the consortium namely from the UoL , KNUST , UAC , UFHB , UCAD , KIT, TUM, UoA and UNU-EHS . These different presentations in their diversity have made it possible to understand the contours of the phenomenon of flooding and the present and future risks addressed by each of these insitutions. Presentations from the above institutions included team presentations, key contributions, objectives, activities, methodological approaches and challenges. Each presentation was debated and allowed participants to ask questions of clarification or make suggestions for meaningful results. It should be emphasized that the various African teams face some issues in conducting their research namely the insufficient or lack of climatic and hydrological data which are useful carry out their research effectively. In this regard, consideration has been given to finding solutions to this problem. After these presentations, a general assembly was opened to allow the actors to express their experiences, the difficulties encountered and their expectations.

Presentations of the PhD students

Since FURIFLOOD is a Research-Action project, PhD students in partner institutions whose research topics are related to the project are associated. Thus, nine (9) PhD students presented the progress of their research and received guidance from the participants. These are:

  • Godfred Abbey Torsah (KNUST) : « Variability of extreme precipitation and its contribution to flooding on the Guinean coast »
  • Thomas Allagbe (UAC) : «Dynamics of land and sea breeze rains in the Gulf of Guinea»
  • Salif Diedhiou (UCAD) : « Simulation of impacts associated with extreme rainfall events in Senegal »
  • Fabian Merk (TUM) : « Multi-objective validation of an application of the SWAT model improving plant growth for a forest-dominated river basin in West Africa »
  • Nadège Parkoo (UoL) : « Study of the dynamics of land use in the upper Mono valley»
  • Têtou-Houyo Blakime (UoL) : « Study of the vulnerability and adaptation of the populations of the new districts of the Greater Lomé district to floods
  • Vida Akyeampong (KNUST) : « Flood and Hazard Mapping in an Urban Watershed »
  • Manuel Rauch (UoA) : « Development of stochastic geostatistical methods to simulate rainfall extremes»
  • Ibrahim Salifou Toure (UFHB) : « Study of the dynamics of extreme precipitation on the current and future risks of urban flooding in West Africa: case of the Abidjan District (Côte d'Ivoire) »

These presentations were followed by exchanges and a summary of the stakeholder meetings in Cotonou and Kumasi.

Official launch ceremony

During this ceremony 5 speeches were made by respectively the Director of the Centre for Research on Climate Change (CRCC), the Director of WASCAL Togo, the representative of the Director of the Centre of Competence of WASCAL (Burkina Faso), the Coordinator of the FuriFlood Europe Project and the 1st Vice-President of the University of Lomé.
Professor Kokou, in his role as Coordinator of the FuriFlood project in Africa , delivered welcoming remarks. He pointed out that the initiators of the project are 4 German and 5 African universities namely Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) of Ghana, Abomey-Calavi University (UAC), Félix Houphouët Bougny University of Abidjan (UFHB), Cheick Anta Diop University of Dakar (UCAD) and University of Lomé with the task of Coordinating the project from the West African side. Two study areas are selected for the implementation of the project in Togo : Zio Est at Greater Lomé ( Urban environment) and upstream part of the Mono river basin ( rural area). He stressed that the present project complements the CLIMAFRI project which focused on the downtream of Nangbéto dam and this extension will allow to better understanding of flood risk at both sides of the Nangbéto dam. He concluded by thanking the various delegations for their visit to Lomé.
The Director of the WASCAL program welcomed the various participants to the launch of the project which is line with the training topic of WASCAL-Togo .He went on by adding that floods are still palpable in both urban and rural areas in terms of impacts on agriculture. Also, the project will highlight solutions through studies that will be conducted with students as it was the case with CLIMAFRI project. The Director of WASCAL concluded his speech by thanking the German Federal Ministry for its support and wished full success to the work of the project.
Furthermore, Dr Seyni SALACK , talking on line on behalf of the Director of the WASCAL Competence Centre, said that FuriFlood is one of the thirty projects submitted for evaluation. It is part of the second phase of the WASCAL research plan ( WRAP2.0) . He stressed that the financial monitoring of the project and its benefits are really expected. According to him, the collaboration of the 5 African countries involved in the project is very interesting and he also wished full success to the work.
Professor Fink in his speech, showed from some images, the need to understand the causes of floods, given that climate change is now a reality experienced by communities. These are expressed through the recurrent floods of recent years in Africa and more particularly in coastal areas where populations are exposed to rising sea levels which exarcerbate the hazard. He added that early warning systems need to be implemented in an interdisciplinary way by meteorology, hydrology and forecasting. Also, He noted the importance of collaboration between German and West African universities for the capacity building of a new generation of researchers on these topics in meet the needs. Ultimately, this collaboration should lead to the co-construction of models and indicators.
Finally, the 1st Vice-President (VP1) of the University of Lomé in his speech said that he was honoured by this meeting, which aims finding ecosystem-based solutions to floods risk. He continued by congratulating and thanking the consortium for initiating the project, between of German and West African universities, in order to better generate scientific knowledge on the factors that trigger climate events, which are a huge issue and a priority for the country. He went on to stress the constraint of climate change which force some inhabitants of the city to live under water. Hence , there is a need to raise awareness and put in place new rainwater drainage infrastructures. For the VP1, the research must provide reliable data through the training of young people, the identification of models, early warning systems, and the establishment of reliable facilities. On these issues the University of Lomé must be a major player, through training and research such as WASCAL and CRCC. The VP1 concluded his remarks by thanking the initiators of this project and expressing his gratitude to the donors, then declared open the first annual meeting of the FURIFLOOD project.

Sharing of experiences

Following the launch ceremony, three presentations on flood risk in West Africa and data collection were presented. The first is the presentation on the achievements and lessons learned from the CLIMAFRI project, presented by Yvonne Walz. As a reminder CLIMAFRI is a research project on flood risk management in the Mono basin downstream of the Nangbéto dam. Then, Mr Jean-Martial Cohard of the Institute of Geosciences of the Environment (IGE) of Grenoble presented AMMA CATCH as an eco-hydro-weather observatory in West Africa with 30 years of experience in hydro-observation weather in this geographical area from which the FURIFLOOD project can learn from. Finally, the third presentation focused on the usefulness of meteorological data for many services. Mr.Abalo Affo-Dogo , head of a division at the General Directorate of National Meteorology of Togo, presented the techniques for acquiring meteorological data, processing and analyzing them, and making them available for decision-making. Following this presentation, discussions took place to understand the factors that explain the lack of meteorological data for certain periods.

Group discussions

Two groups were formed in relation to the project components for discussion. These are the Ouémé and Kumassi groups :

  • Activities of the Ouémé Case Study Group :

For this group formed by Togo, Benin and Germany, the discussion has led to an orientation on three axes:
- Data collection from 2000 to 2020
- Identification and choice of 3 years as reference: 2015, 2019, 2020
- Work on risk assessment, modelling and methodology
- Images Sentinel (10m) and Landsat (30m)
- Collaboration between students through the establishment of a platform

  • Activities of the Kumasi case –study group

Bringing together Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, the Kumassi Group after presenting the flood event in their area, the state of progress of the work, focused on tools for data collection and analysis. Thus, the need to collaborate with the consortium teams on data collection, as well as on the sharing of experience is essential.

Field visit

A field trip was made at the third day of the first annual meeting of the project using two buses of 30 and 15 seats as well as car of 5 seats. It was carried out through the following itinerary: Lomé-Dzagblé-Abobo-Hahotoe-Togoville-Zalivé-Aného-Lomé.
The visit was made in 4 main steps:
i) The first stop was made in the the Zio River Basin at Kegue. At this location, Professor Kokou talked about the importance of this river for the population. Indeed, the wetland formed by the Zio River in this area is the site of a wide range of socio-economic activities such as: food crops, market gardening, breeding, fishing, horticulture, tourism etc. However, It has recently been hit by a great deal of anthropogenic pressure, which is leading to the degradation of these various economic activities.
ii) The second stop was made in the Djagblé rice-growing basin. The participants were able to meet the population who mentioned several factors explaining the floods in the area. Among these factors, there is mainly the poor construction of the irrigation channel of rice farms which blocks the natural flow of rainwater thus causing flooding in the area. This situation forces some to move temporarily and others to live in the water that exposed them to many types of diseases.
iii) The third stop was mate at the village of Abobo, where participants observed the connection between the Zio River and Lake Togo. Soon after, the team went to the second basin formed by the Haho River, whose northern part was developed for rice growing.
iv) The visit continued on the Zalivé River and then on the Aného Bridge towards the premises of the Prefecture of Lakes. The planned visit to the lower Mono valley could not be carried out.
It should be noted that after the third station, a refreshment break was held in Togoville at the Hotel Nachtigal to celebrate April 27, which marks the independence of Togo.

Training sessions

Two trainings sessions were organized for the for the PhD students of the project and those of Wascal, during the last day of the FURIFLOOD annual meeting at the Climate Change Research Centre (CRCC) of the University of Lomé.
The first course focused on the installation and basics of TELLEMAC-2D, a hydrodynamic modelling software for the simulation of free surface flows. It was administered by Mr. Karl BRIOCH of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). After installing the software, the trainer first presented the benefits of using open source software in the scientific field. He then explained the meanings of hydrological hydrodynamic modellings. The rest of the training covered the basics of hydrodynamic modelling and the necessary tools. At the end, the trainer showed the practical use of the software with application sessions on PCs.
The second training focused on “Extreme Precipitation Statistical Methods: Course and Exercises”. It was designed by Jan Bliefernicht and Manuel Rauch from the University of Augsburg (UoA) and taught by Dr Jan Bliefernicht. The training focused concretely on several methods to be used in the statistical analysis of extreme rainfall. These are:
- Frequency analysis of hydrometeorological extremes using probabilistic distribution functions
- Exercices on stochastic simulation and interpolation of extreme rainfall using geostatistical methods. The trainers share their contacts to the students for further needs.