Measuring Subjective Flood Resilience in Suburban Dakar: A Before–After Evaluation of the “Live with Water” Project

Patrick Bottazzi, Mirko S. Winkler, Sébastien Boillat, Abdoulaye Diagne, Mashoudou Maman Chabi Sika, Arsène Kpangon, Salimata Faye and Chinwe Ifejika Speranza
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Patrick Bottazzi: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern-CH, Switzerland
Mirko S. Winkler: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, 4002 Basel, Switzerland
Sébastien Boillat: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern-CH, Switzerland
Abdoulaye Diagne: Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES), Cité Iba Ndiaye Diadji, n°1 & 2, Pyrotechnie, rue 10 prolongée, Dakar, Senegal
Mashoudou Maman Chabi Sika: Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES), Cité Iba Ndiaye Diadji, n°1 & 2, Pyrotechnie, rue 10 prolongée, Dakar, Senegal
Arsène Kpangon: Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES), Cité Iba Ndiaye Diadji, n°1 & 2, Pyrotechnie, rue 10 prolongée, Dakar, Senegal
Salimata Faye: Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES), Cité Iba Ndiaye Diadji, n°1 & 2, Pyrotechnie, rue 10 prolongée, Dakar, Senegal
Chinwe Ifejika Speranza: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern-CH, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: In the last decade, sub-Saharan African countries have taken various measures to plan for and adapt to floods in order to reduce exposure and its impacts on human health, livelihoods, and infrastructure. Measuring the effects of such initiatives on social resilience is challenging as it requires to combine multiple variables and indicators that embrace thematic, spatial, and temporal dimensions inherent to the resilience thinking and concept. In this research, we apply a subjective resilience indicator framework and a before-after-control-intervention (BACI) evaluation to empirically measure the impacts of the “Live with Water” (LWW) project on suburban households in Dakar, Senegal. Our framework is based on an empirically measurable resilience index that combines anticipatory, adaptive, and absorptive capacity—considered as structural dimensions—with the concept of transformative capacity—considered as a temporal reconfiguration of the first three dimensions. Our finding let us estimate that the project increased the absorptive and the anticipatory capacities by 10.6% and 4.6%, respectively. However, adaptive capacity remained unchanged. This may be explained by the fact that the project was more successful in building drainage and physical infrastructures, rather than improving multi-level organizations and strategies to cope with existing flood events. Decoupling implementation time between physical infrastructures and longer term institutional and livelihood based support could both improve projects’ results and their evaluations.

Keywords: urban resilience; flood; impact evaluation; BACI; subjective resilience; Senegal; sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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