Drought is the single most damaging natural hazard in Kenya, with major impacts on livelihoods and food security, disease and mortality, mostly in the Arid and Semi Arid lands (ASAL) lands of north and east Kenya where pastoralist livelihoods are based on livestock fed on pastureland. The Kenya Vision 2030 Ending Drought Emergencies plan, which prioritises developing and improving an Integrated Drought early warning system (EWS), coordinated by NDMA.

ForPAc will seek to improve drought forecast risk information and will focus FbA approaches in two arid/semi-arid counties of Isiolo and Kitui, building on the already effective partnerships between county level KMD, government, NGO intermediaries and communities.

The Nzoia river basin in Western Kenya is home to high population densities in both rural and small urban settlements, with high vulnerability to frequent flood hazards. Heavy rain in the Cherangani highlands causes downstream floods which result in destruction of infrastructure, crop failure, disease epidemics amounting to annual losses ~$1.8M and displacement of ~12,000 people. KMD now operates an advanced operational flood EWS on the Nzoia river.

ForPAc will contribute to the KMD ambition to drive this model with probabilistic precipitation forecasts from GPCs and in-house NWP models, and to the associated FbA decision-making.

Flood is an increasing risk in Nairobi as the city’s infrastructure struggles to keep pace with rapid formal and informal expansion, a characteristic of many African cities. Regular flooding in wet seasons results from high intensity rainfall events over hours to days, causing health and livelihood impacts on the most vulnerable populations. However, Nairobi currently lacks a well-functioning integrated flood EWS and well established risk baseline information.

ForPAc aims to enhance the existing KMD probabilistic extreme rainfall and flood risk forecast information for Nairobi and to assess the potential for systematic FbA approaches to preparedness action.