Centre for Disaster Risk Management and Development Studies
The Lake Chad basin is exposed to flood, drought, windstorm, fire and epidemic, in that order and all at once. The Centre works out where those hazards lie, warns the people in their path, and teaches the communities most often hit how to lose less when they are hit.
Risk in the Lake Chad basin
The hazards of this region are well known and well repeated: the floods of the river plains, the drought that follows them, the windstorm damage to roofs and crops, and the epidemics that travel with displacement. What is missing, usually, is the local detail - which communities lie in the path, who there is who cannot move, and how long the water stays.
The Centre’s work is to establish that detail, and to put it in the hands of the people who have to act on it: the state emergency agencies, the local authorities and the communities themselves.
Areas of work
- Mapping the flood, drought, windstorm and fire risk of the region, at community level.
- Emergency preparedness, and the training of those who respond first.
- Early warning: what can be known, how soon, and how to pass it on to the people at risk.
- Community resilience: building back better after a disaster than was standing before it.
- Studies of displacement and the effect of disasters on livelihoods and schooling.
Fields of work
The Centre’s work is organised into five areas.