IHE Delft to lead AFMA-based flood resilience project for Alexandria, Egypt
Dutch-based educational institute IHE Delft will lead a project to improve the flood resilience of the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria.
A new approach, the Anticipatory Flood Management (AFMA), will be used to make the city better prepared for severe flooding.
The project will serve as an example for many other cities in the Arab region to make the switch from responding to anticipating to a disastrous flood.
Severe rainfall event
On October 25 and November 4 of 2015, Alexandria City and the neighboring region of Egypt experienced an unexpected severe rainfall event causing severe flooding.
This devastating flood has been described as ‘the worst flooding of Alexandria City over the past decades in terms of the number of people affected and the amount of economic damage’.
It is anticipated that these exceptional rainfall events will happen more often in this region in the future.
Archives of weather forecasts
The Anticipatory Flood Management (AFMA) uses weather forecasts and water system simulation models to take operational water management actions before an event occurs.
Important for a reliable use of the models is a verification analysis with continuous simulation spanning multiple years.
Archives of weather forecasts of multiple years are necessary, because of the low frequency of critical events.
General process of anticipatory water management.
Soft and hard measures
AFMA will include a range of solutions, ranging from (soft) flood emergency measures including flood forecasting and warning, evacuation and recovery plans, to hard measures and land use planning controls such as flood mitigation works, including capacity increase of drainage systems, and zoning requirements.
Flood protection such as minimum flood levels and flood-proofing building controls are also part of the project.
Over 500 water ambassadors will be trained in the scope of the project, and a Flood Management Unit will be established to ensure long term flood resilience.
Public-private partnership
AFMA is a public-private partnership that aims to connect engineers, planners, architects, designers and other experts to community members, companies and local government to propose new solutions that will strengthen the city’s resilience to severe rain storms.
The partners are IHE Delft (lead), Alexandria University, Montaser (General Contracting Company), Group of Integrated Design, Alexandria Business Association. Associated partners are HKV, Regional water authority Delfland, City of Rotterdam.
The project has been awarded a grant from the Sustainable Water Fund of the Netherlands.
This news item was originally published on the website of IHE Delft.
Read also on this website
● Adaptation Futures 2016: Twelve nations launch coalition to safeguard vulnerable river deltas against climate change, 11 May 2016
● Unesco-IHE signs MoU with Hong Kong Drainage Services on storm water management, 24 November 2014
● Egypt and the Netherlands sign MoU for five year cooperation on water resource management, 3 November 2014
● Country: Egypt
More information
IHE Delft
Delft, the Netherlands
+31 15 2152321
www.un-ihe.org