Abstract:
The most significant strategy to address flood hazards is to conduct a Flood Vulnerability Assessment (FVA)
because it informs the disaster risk reduction and preparedness process. FVA provides metrics that can help
manage flood risks and disaster events. However, many flood vulnerable regions like Malawi still lack FVA supporting frameworks in all phases (pre, trans, and post-disaster). Partly, this is attributed to a lack of evidence based studies to inform the processes. On one hand, the frameworks that exist in Malawi such as the Unified
Beneficiary Register (UBR) and Rapid Assessment (RA) are tools that reflect the aftermath of a disaster. On
the other hand, the Participatory Vulnerability Capacity Assessment (PVCA), though used as a tool, cannot be
negated that it is an approach rather than a tool because indicators have been not suggested. This informed
the need to assess Households’ Flood Vulnerability (HFV) in the Mtandire ward of Lilongwe City (LC) and
Traditional Authority (T/A) of Karonga District (KD) to propose an FVA framework for rural and urban
informal settlements in Malawi and beyond. A household survey was used to collect data from a sample of
545 households’ participants in June-August 2021. Vulnerability was explored through a combination of
Underlying Vulnerability Factors (UVFs) with Vulnerability Components (VCs). The UVFs and VCs were
agglomerated using abinomial multiple logit regression model. Variance Inflation Factors (VIFs) were used to check
the multicollinearity of variables in the regression model. The analysis was carried out using R software and STATA.
Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) were conducted to
determine the variability of factors contributing to vulnerability. The results reveal a total average score of
high vulnerability (0.62) and moderate vulnerability (0.52) on MCA in T/A Kilupula and Mtandire ward
respectively. The results further show that all the indicator variables in Mtandire ward have an inertia value at the
expected rate of less than 10% while in T/A Kilupula lack of credit unions (0.103), lack of markets (0.499) and
poverty (0.123) display values that deviate from the expected score of <10%. The study concludes that the
determinants of households’ flood vulnerability are place settlement, low-risk knowledge, communication
accessibility, lack of early warning systems, and limited access to income of household heads. This study provides
an FVA framework that could be applied to promote the resilience of communities to mitigate flood risks and
support the planning and decision-making process in Malawi and at any region in the world because all the input
data is globally available.
