Caroline Michellier

Contextualizing vulnerability assessment: a support to geo-risk management in central Africa

In central Africa, a combination of several types of major geo-hazards threatens the highly populated area centred on the Lake Kivu Basin and the Virunga Volcanic Province. Contributing to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) policies not only go through hazards mechanisms analysis, but also through vulnerability assessment. This paper stresses the methodological choices made to target vulnerability assessment in a context of scarce and unreliable data. We discuss here the various stages we have overcome and the analyses conducted at the local scale, i.e. on targeted urban sites. The cities of Bukavu and Goma (Republic Democratic of Congo) count about 800,000 inhabitants each, and catastrophic events are frequently recorded. As a result of our analysis, grounding vulnerability assessment exclusively on a general definition seems not appropriate. Relevant peculiarities of the studied area should also be taken into account in vulnerability and risk assessment. Our research contributes to increase the relevance of DRR policies for risk-exposed populations. Following, one of our main concerns will be to challenge stakeholders who have to face numerous other issues on a daily basis, such as security, land issue or resources.

Evaluating TMPA rainfall over the sparsely gauged East African Rift

AbstractAccurate precipitation data are fundamental for understanding and mitigating the disastrous effects of many natural hazards in mountainous areas. Floods and landslides, in particular, are p...

An urban expansion model for African cities using fused multi temporal optical and SAR data

The forecast of human population distribution in Africa is limited by the lack of spatial urban expansion model and the quality of its data sources. One way to overcome this shortcoming is to integrate multi-source and multi-temporal data for improving the delineation and the characterization of human settlements. This paper presents a fully automatic fusion processing scheme of multi-temporal SAR and optical data for improving the segmentation of African urban areas.