Resource information
This report describes a pilot study of
natural risk hazards in the peri-urban extension areas of
the Dakar Metropolitan Area, Senegal. The area subject of
this study stretches across 580 square kilometers, covering
less than 1 percent of the national territory, but housing
about 50 percent of Senegal's urban population. Much of
the rapid population growth of the Dakar Metropolitan Area
is taking place beyond the boundaries of the Department of
Dakar (the city center), in peri-urban areas that combine
two disquieting features: they present significant
vulnerability to some natural hazards, and they have unclear
administrative and governance arrangements, often being out
of the direct oversight of established urban and rural local
governments. Situations like this are not unusual in
developing countries, and call for more systematic attention
to hazard risk management in peri-urban areas, including a
better understanding and awareness of the nature of the
hazards that they face as well as of the institutional
capacities and measures that would be necessary to manage
them better. The objective of this pilot study is,
therefore, two-pronged. First, the study intends to propose
a new methodology for quick assessment of natural hazard
risks at a metropolitan region scale, using new tools of
spatial analysis based on geographic information systems
(GIS) data. Second, the study aims to apply the principles
and diagnostic questionnaire of the climate change city
primer developed by the East Asia region of the World Bank
to get a comprehensive view of the institutional framework
for climate change-related hazard risk management existing
in the city at this time. Bringing the spatial and the
institutional analyses together, the study proposes and
starts to develop a number of dissemination and
awareness-raising tools that can help to inform different
stakeholders about the general parameters of the natural
hazard risks facing the Dakar Metropolitan area. The pilot
study concludes with a broad action plan for Dakar, to ramp
up disaster management practices, as motivation for a
stakeholder debate to define subsequently a set of specific
and viable actions.
