sustainable urban drainage system: nairobi case study

Abstract

One way of dealing with urban floods is to ignore them. In many countries, Kenya included, neither the people nor the authorities want to take the danger due to urban floods seriously, partly due to large recurrent intervals of most urban floods. It may also be that the risk due to floods are taken for granted, given the many dangers and problems confronted with in people’s daily lives (Van Westen, C.J., 2000 ). To effectively reduce the impacts of floods in our cities, including Nairobi, they must be managed before they turn into disaster. The primary objectives of sustainable urban drainage system can be considered to be the protection of life, property, the community and the environment. The process comprises a series of well-known stages, which begins with urban drainage evaluation. The second stage involves the evaluation, selection and implementation of flood reduction measures, and the establishment of enforcement procedures. This stage links urban flood management to emergency planning and management that are subsequent stages of the process. Preparedness, response and recovery are the three principal stages within emergency planning and management. The final stage in the flood management process is the feedback stage, where post-event appraisal of mitigation measures and other phases are evaluated (Starosolszky, O., and Melder O.M., 1990). The sustainable urban drainage management process is open to institutional arrangements and policies, political economy and the technological environment. These influences exert both positive and negative forces on the drainage management thereby making it either effective or ineffective. The nature of hazardous environment need not be overemphasized because it determines the need for management. To make the process smooth, public cooperation is needed