Digital Citzen Science for community-based resilient Environmental Management (D-Sire)

Overview

This project tackles the sectors of environmental degradation and natural hazard management. Natural hazards associated with population pressure, fragile livelihoods, and land scarcity have posed developmental challenges. The Western region of Uganda has some of the most densely populated rural districts of Uganda and is characterized by an alarming population growth rate (~3.4% at country scale). This region is also known to be of great economic interest for its high agricultural productivity due to fertile volcanic soils as well as its touristic attractions.  Land degradation induced by overexploitation of natural resources and inappropriate agricultural practices has led to reducing agricultural yields and insufficient food production for self-consumption and market. In addition, human occupation of environmentally fragile lands, associated with the possible increase of extreme weather events induced by climate change and variability, has led to the increased impacts of environmental hazards such as soil erosion, landslides, flash floods, hailstorms, droughts, pests, and diseases, severely affecting income and food security of small-holder farmers (e.g. Mertens et al. 2016).

Key national authorities are the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA, established by the National Environmental Act of 1998), which is in charge of coordinating, monitoring, regulating, and supervising environmental management in the country, and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) responsible for disaster risk management (National Policy for Disaster Preparedness and Management of 2010). Regarding disaster management, the national policy establishes Disaster Management Committees at district and sub-county levels but our recent research has shown that these committees lack the expertise to conduct risk assessments and financial means to implement disaster risk reduction actions (Maes et al. 2018). These committees have expressed their will to receive more information on the state of the environment in their district and support to implement risk reduction measures.

This research hence documents the evolution in time of the natural hazards, identify potential suitable strategies to reduce their impacts, and raises awareness among the affected communities. Digitalization for development and a citizen Science approach to geo-observers are central to this research project. A smartphone technology to develop a two-way communication with the targeted communities, with the geo-observers serving as facilitators and the associated digital spatial database used by university scientists to integrate environmental observations is used.

The project aims to 1/ empower citizens in reporting disasters in real-time in not easily accessible geographical areas of South West Uganda; 2/ enhance the skills and knowledge of the geo-observers as environmental facilitators to be able to serve as the interface between the communities and the scientists; 3/ develop teaching and research capabilities for geo-database management and analysis in the partner universities through Ph.D. and MSc training;  4/ scientifically valorize the crowd-sourced database to improve Spatio-temporal modeling of hazardous processes; 5/ develop and test new methods to initiate the implementation of resilient livelihood practices; and 6/favor multi-lateral interactions between rural communities, district authorities, and scientists.