Urban flood risk is basically high in such cities where cities is not properly managed and planned. Flood impact is one of the most significant disasters in this universe. More than half, flood damages occur in Asia. Causes of floods are due to natural factors such as heavy rainfall, high floods and human factors such as blocking of channels, improper land use, and deforestation in headwaters region and so on.
Floods result in losses of life and damage properties. Population increase results in more urbanization, more impervious area and less infiltration and greater flood peak and runoff.
Problems become more critical due to more severe and frequent flooding likely caused by climate change, socio-economic damage, population affected and limited funds.
Flood loss prevention and mitigation includes structural flood control measures such as construction of dams and non-structural measures such as flood forecasting and warning, flood hazard and risk management, public participation and institutional arrangement.
To minimize the risks and work for the community and society, cities must have to adopt a new mechanism how to control on urban floods. In most developing countries, flood disaster management activities are handled by government.
Participation of nongovernmental agencies and private sectors are very limited. But in case of Nepal, we see just opposite as government is weak and more private sector specially NGO's and INGO's are involved with local community for flood risk management.
Flood disaster management in developing countries is mostly reactive responding to prevailing disaster situations (emergency response and recovery).
But in Nepal due to lack of skilled manpower and resources, many people have to suffer and mostly in Terai region; people still have a traditional and religious belief that God will come and save it as this is a case due to illiteracy.
We don't see any precaution measures were adopted in both urban and rural areas of Nepal. Haphazard urban growth, improper settlements and lack of strong policies & plan, people have to suffer a lot.
To deal with these kinds of disasters, government should have a collaborative planning and minimize the loss by giving more focus to infrastructure planning. In Nepal, we lack everything. Though there is a development work going on, but still traditional based approach design and government lacks farsighted works in this development sector.
Cities structure is not planned properly as we see haphazard settlement, crowded mass, no proper drainage, lack in river management system and corruption everywhere in Nepal. The institutional arrangement has a overlapping of function and due to lack of coordination between the agencies; citizens have to suffer a lot in Nepal.
As to understand and observe the situation of our government works in minimizing risk, we can see an example of devastating Earthquake which hit Nepal on 25th April 2015 and its continuous aftershocks which can give a clear image how our government is working for emergency response and relief. As stated above, risk management needs a collaborative planning, people's participation and proper and clear institutional arrangement with a goal in hand to perform action and work for the safer society.
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