General information
Project title: Water Risks and Resilience in Urban-Rural Areas in Southern Africa - Co-Production of Hydro-Climate Services for an Adaptive and Sustainable Disaster Risk Management
Client: German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety
Location: South Africa
Project duration: 2024 - 2028
Project description
Water Risks and Resilience in Urban-Rural Areas in Southern Africa - Co-Production of Hydro-Climate Services for an Adaptive and Sustainable Disaster Risk Management (WaRisCo)
WaRisCo project is focused on two of the biggest hydrological extreme events i.e., flood and drought in South Africa because it has been projected to become significantly warmer and drier, with more extreme rainfall events in the east:
- The risk of a “day-zero” drought in the Gauteng province of South Africa - an event with potentially catastrophic socio-economic and environmental impacts, and
- The risk of “mega-flooding” in the greater Durban region (i.e. KwaZulu-Natal region) - such floods may be devastating in terms of the number of human lives lost.
In the WaRisCo project, a comprehensive hydrological modelling system will be developed that will integrate high-resolution (i.e. km-scale) regional climate data and explorative land-use scenarios, enabling the prediction of future drought and flood risk in South Africa. In addition, climate-smart Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) plans and climate change adaptation strategies will be developed in close connection with key stakeholders.
Project Highlights:
- Integrated hydrological model development for the Upper Vaal and KwaZulu-Natal River System
- Generating climate change projections at a high resolution (e.g. 3 km)
- Development of explorative land use management and land cover (LUMCC) scenarios
- Projections and assessment of future hydro-climate hazards for these two integrated river systems
- Co-design and co-development of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and adaptation strategies together with the key stakeholders
Main project website and list of consortium members: https://www.geographie.uni-jena.de/en/9009/project-consortium
Strategic water resources analysis and Co-production of water and climate services (StratCo)
In this WaRisCo project, SYDRO will be dealing with a sub-project named Strategic water resources analysis and Co-production of water and climate services (StratCo).
The aim of the sub-project is “the model-based quantitative assessment and assessment of the impacts of climate change, considering the change in land use, followed by the analysis of adaptation strategies for water management”. The integration of land-use changes is essential, as climate changes cause changes in vegetation and both affect hydrology. The effectiveness analysis is carried out using the SYDRO’s in-house developed process-based model hydrological model called TALSIM. This hydrological model allows the integration of:
- Water management strategies
- Water infrastructure operations
- Water demands and allocations
TALSIM has been tried and tested on numerous projects in Germany, in the entire Nile catchment area, on the Mekong, etc. This approach is suitable for the transfer of research to practice and can be transferred to other catchments in Southern Africa and beyond.
