Community Water Watch Short general project overviewDar Es Salaam is frequently hit by floods. In particular informal settlements exhibit a high vulnerability to floods, as settlements are unplanned, have to cope with very limited infrastructure and solid waste frequently clogs the already limited capacity of the drainage system, causing more severe flooding and direct and indirect consequences. During and after flood events, the Tanzania Red Cross Society (TCRS) and Prime Minister’s Office – Disaster Management Department (DMD) help those affected with relief and rebuilding activities. Timely information on hydrological impacts is still a shortcoming in the chain of information.The World Bank has initiated community mapping efforts to map out these vulnerable neighbourhoods and open up these data through the open mapping project OpenStreetMap (OSM). This should then lead to improved knowledge of flood prone areas, and the exposure of communities to these floods.The PvW project wishes to develop a “Community Water Watch” (CWW), a co-designed flood early warning service, that uses and organises existing open online media communication channels, relies on innovative affordable and robust weather stations, and uses hydrological models, built on open-data and the earlier mentioned community collected map data. Technologies used are self-supporting being:a) low cost and very robust TAHMO meteorological stations,b) communication through already existing online media channels (in particular WhatsApp groups are strong within Dar es Salaam), andc) models and drainage state based on very recent community collected data within OpenStreetMap.To make it sustainable, the system runs as a service so that local users are not burdened with ICT maintenance and support requirements. The service will be implemented with partners on the ground TRCS and DMD so that a community co-design can be realized, and the service will fit on actions that can realistically be supported by flood early warning. The service will be piloted on the Msimbazi valley and the surrounding wards, which are the most flood prone in Dar es Salaam.The project received support letters from World Bank and Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).Initial activities and results of the projectIn the inception phase there will be meetings with partners and interviews with local stakeholders to prepare a core requirement document with use-cases will be established discussing the business, functional, technical, graphical and content requirements.In the second phase use cases are prioritized and the design of service will be elaborated.The third phase is the implementation phase for:1. Real-time monitoring network and training;2. Collect time series of historical media information;3. selection of champion users from most used online media channels that can provide additional real-time ground information;4. Establishment of real-time online media feed;5. Development of additional FEWS functionalities;6. Setup of detailed hydrological and impact model;7. Integrate hydrological model, online media feed and meteorological data in Delft-FEWS;8. Develop web front-end.In the fourth phase the service will be deployed on line and a closing demonstration to most promising identified users will be held.The planned results- Staff of TRCS and DMD are using Community Water Watch to improve warning, disaster preparedness and communication during disasters.- 100s TRCS volunteers in Dar es Salaam can better prepare in advance of a flood event.- The number of TRCS volunteers increased (community members applied to become a volunteer as a result of the project).- A sound business architecture is designed for the sustainability of the service at TRCS and DMD and for the upscaling of the service to other cities and countries.- CWW has been demonstrated with 3 to 4 other stakeholders that are potentially interested (both in and outside Tanzania).- Webinar on the established service has been visited by a group of interested stakeholders.What makes the technology, product, method or approach used innovativeThis project is new and innovative as it combines:- unique Dutch knowledge on operational monitoring of meteorology with affordable, robust, yet WMO compliant sensors,- unique, Dutch knowledge on community-centred communication through online media,- unique Dutch knowledge on OpenStreetMap-based impact models, and- unique Dutch knowledge on forecasting (Delft-FEWS),- into an end-user service “Community Water Watch”, co-designed by the end-users.Such service is not available in the target country, nor in other countries in the region.