Indonesia: Java Flood One

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The objective of this project is to create social and economic benefits by developing a set of medium term flood forecast (MRFF) tools for the urban centres of Jakarta, Bandung and Surakarta on the island of Java in Indonesia. The skills and development associated with this project will be strongly embedded within Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and will depend on free software packages and cost effective data acquisition solutions such that ITB will be able to independently develop similar MRFF tools for other cities in Indonesia following the cessation of the NERC funding. It is envisaged that developed workflows and methodologies can also be applied to flood affected ODA countries beyond Indonesia in the future.

Flooding represents the most frequently occurring hydrometreological hazard in Indonesia, contributing to around 31% of all disaster events recorded by the National Disaster Management Agency. Impacts from fluvial flooding in Jakarta alone are estimated to cost around USD 321 million per year. The social benefits of MRFF are difficult to estimate but the economic benefit of flood awareness alone is of the order of USD 400 for every USD 1 invested.

The new MRFFs will bring benefits to communities beyond conventional early warning systems by enabling conservation of livelihoods as well as lives. Economic benefits associated with additional lead in time provided by medium term forecasts include avoidance of damage and loss associated with flood events and reduction of relief and rehabilitation costs. In addition to this, newly installed hydrological instruments along with local NGO training will provide additional facilities to improve accuracy for local early warning flood systems, imperative for effective evacuation planning. New sub-catchment scale medium range weather and stream flow forecasts will also help improve agricultural planning and output as well as increased water security. The project will also provide new facilities and training for ITB to determine dynamic topographical changes anywhere in Indonesia. Beyond flood forecasting, the ability to acquire such data will be of significant benefit to infrastructure and town planning agencies. Yielded value could include, for example, avoidance of new construction work in areas significantly affected by subsidence.

The research is designed using participatory approaches to enrol potential end users into co-developing outcomes and outputs to improve flood risk communication. The project will develop and run a series of training workshops and public engagement sessions to launch and cascade the new flood risk communication tools and additional benefits in the study areas. These sessions will be co-delivered by the UK and Indonesian project teams.

We will be working with a range of partners to deliver impacts including government departments such as BNBP/BPBD (Indonesia's Disaster Management Agency), IAHRI (Indonesian Agro-climate and Hydrological Research Institute), PT Reasuransi MAIPARK and local NGOs such as Jaga Balai and Ciliwung Medeka. These latter organisations represent local community groups who have set up their own flood warning system using real-time and historical visual observations.