ANALYSING EFFECTIVENESS OF MITIGATION MEASURES OF FLOODS: CASE STUDY AT DWANGWA RIVER IN NKHOTAKOTA DISTRICT

Floods are the most widespread and frequent natural hazard in the world. Since Malawi experience floods in some areas and there have been reports of how vulnerable people are mostly affected especially people living in coastal, lower shire, and lakeshore areas. Dwangwa River being a main river as it receives high flow of water from different rivers. This influences the area to be more vulnerable to flood hazards. It is impossible to end the flood risks, but it is possible to work towards reduction of their impacts and reduce the losses, which they commonly cause. In response to these flooding problems, mitigation actions are applied to reduce the flood impacts. The sustainable development benefits of mitigation measure vary over sectors include economic, environment and social. Generally, mitigation improves the productivity of resources use, whether it is water, or land, yield positive benefits. The study has focused on analyzing the effectiveness of mitigation measures in Dwangwa area. Finally, the study revealed that applied measures in the area were effective as it reduces the flood impacts and discovered from diminish of loss and damages and even the volume of water in the river compared with past years without application of measures. The findings are useful to other district in Malawi of similar issue of flood hazard since those mitigation measures are applied in most of the countries of the world.