Erick Mnyali

Erick is a Tanzania UN youth fellow in 2023, Serving as a YouthMappers regional ambassador for the YouthMappers Program where he helps to support university-led chapters in the East African region striving to share his skills in open mapping to support data-based decisions and solving community climate-related challenges. Also, as the National Focal point for the United Federation of Youth for water and climate (UN1FY), He dreams to see a network of team players among youth who are focused on finding solutions for their communities by giving out insights and educating their local community, especially marginalized groups through capacity development and giving voice to youth to create team players among themselves in addressing climate and water-related challenges. Erick is also a co-founder of a non-governmental organization “GeoTE TANZANIA” which aims at using Geospatial technology to help address sustainable development goals. As a researcher, Erick published the article titled “Analysis of the Current and Future Land Use/Land Cover Changes in Peri-Urban Areas of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques” in the Tanzania Journal of Science.


Session

12-02
15:00
20min
"Mapping flood protected zones and evacuation routes to improve response capabilities in local communities"
Erick Mnyali, Janeth Erasto Mwakisole

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), flash floods are defined as floods of “short duration with a relatively high peak discharge”. This rainfall driven flash floods are accelerated by a range of non-climatic factors such as unplanned settlement patterns and solid waste dumping into rivers, streams and channels. Lack of effective disaster response capabilities to flash floods events in Morogoro municipality and Ifakara Town Council in Tanzania has been linked to lack of updated maps and enough data that addresses risks and vulnerability of local communities to flash floods. In this context, local communities who are at risk and first responders might not be aware of evacuation routes and safe areas. This project was granted by WMO and Global Water Partnership (GWP) to SMCoSE YouthMappers as winners of Integrated drought management program (IDMP) and Associated Programme of Flood Management (APFM) Initiative for Youth led projects. The specific objectives were (1) Field and remote (OSM) community data gathering (2) Flood protection zones and evacuation routes mapping using GIS techniques (3) Project findings dissemination through workshops to stakeholders. The results are both web maps and base maps that show the evacuation routes and flood extent zones that will assist the local government in response to flash floods in Morogoro and Ifakara Town council. This project is at its final stages and seeks to share the knowledge and methodology to stakeholders and out scaling it in vulnerable communities in Tanzania and Africa at large. The proposed talk is a continuous effort by SMCoSE YouthMappers, a YouthMappers chapter at Sokoine University of agriculture who have been addressing flash floods challenges through community mapping programs.

Community
Room 1