Highlights
- Improving preparedness and influence mitigation in the Oti River Basin by extending an existing forecasting system and improving communication of alerts;
- Strengthening flood management through capacity building and partnerships, including with Japanese universities; and
- Providing technical assistance to improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts is being provided for the White Volta Flood Early Warning System.
Project Overview
Following devastating flooding that hit Northern Ghana in 2010, the Government of Ghana escalated efforts to better manage and forecast flood events. Upon request from the government, the World Bank with resources from Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) financed developing a flood forecasting system on more than 800km of the White Volta River from the border with Burkina Faso to Lake Volta. This forecasting system has been operational since 2012.
Ghana now aims to extend flood forecasting capacity to other parts of the Volta Basin, notably the Oti River, with financial and technical supports from the Japan-World Bank Program for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Management in Developing Countries. This grant includes support in three key areas:
- Sustaining and extending the Volta flood forecasting system to the Oti River;
- Disseminating flood information and identifying new IT based applications for flood management; and
- Supporting university collaborations to reinforce Ghana’s technical expertise and build the technical capacity of professionals, such as hydrologists, meteorologists, and climate experts.
Activity Updates
- The project team will undertake assessments covering the genesis of flooding on the Oti River, the exposures of various assets and communities to flooding, the effectiveness of structural and non-structural intervention measures, and the operational flood forecasting system for Oti River.
- A regional consultation with delegates from Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Togo was conducted in November 2015 and outlined the approach to implement regional flood forecasting.
- To improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts, technical assistance has been provided to the Water Resources Commission of Ghana, the Hydrological Services Department, and the Ghana Meteorological Agency for the White Volta Flood Early Warning System (FEWS).
