CBFEWS at Malawi

Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Sustainable Eco Engineering (SEE) with support of government line agencies of Malawi have come together to save lives and livelihoods from flooding by installation of low-cost community-based flood early warning systems (CBFEWS) in selected eight districts in Malawi under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-supported project “Establishment of community based flood early warning system in selected districts in Malawi”.

This time, it was about the installation and testing of CBFEWS instrument in the flood prone districts of Malawi. It was not only about installation but also, building the capacity of trainers through TOT training from various government line agencies in terms of understanding the core of CBFEWS implementation and installation procedure resulting in a sustainable system. For same, RCMRD, ICIMOD and SEE conducted training on CBFEWS in 9 August 2021 to share the theoretical knowledge on CBFEWS implementation and demonstrated the instrument to the participants. Total of 21 participants from Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA), Department of Water Resources (DWR), Department of Climate Change and Meterological Services (DCCMS), Environment Affairs Department (EAD), Road authority and Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) participated. The training was followed by the field work on instrument installation starting from 10 August 2021 in which out of 21 participants, 16 participants participated.

Two sites were selected at Salima district for the installation of CBFEWS instrument where team from SEE, ICIMOD and RCMRD demonstrated the trainers on the installation procedure from selecting the site, selection of caretaker, assembling and installing the instrument at appropriate location to detect the flood level. In parallel, DoDMA with support of trainers engaged the communities and aware them about CBFEWS and its benefits in terms of saving lives and livelihoods from floods.

Capacity developed from the training and installation field exercise at Salima, the trainers with guidance of resource person from SEE, ICIMOD and RCMRD initiated the installation work starting from the Phalombe district, southern region of Malawi. In course of installation, there were many challenges but the best thing was trainers able to rectify the problem and solve it which was very impressive. A total of 21 CBFEWS instrument was successfully installed in 8 districts of Malawi.

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