Study title

PhD Research: Urban growth is a factor known to intensify local flooding. By orienting urban development, land use planning may contribute to reduce flood risk through regulatory constraints. Two case studies were developed to determine the extent to which such strategy may be effective: Kigali, Rwanda (where land use regulations are stringently applied) and Kampala, Uganda (with much less effective institutions but important infrastructure investments over the last decade). Both cities are mid-sized (one to two million inhabitants), they share a physical context of hilly terrain and low-lying flood prone valleys but with divergent policy and institutional organizations.Two main hypotheses were investigated based on the case studies. The relations between the physical system, through recurrent flooding, and the human settlement pattern were first explored. Urban growth is one cause of increased flooding but, in turn, flooding was thought to contribute to the urban pattern's evolution. Secondly, and based on this premise, a land use management system (with regulation a prominent component) was proposed as a flood risk mitigation strategy: these questions hinged around the feasibility of land use controls in the specific context of the cases (mid-to-large cities in Sub-Saharan Africa) and of their cumulative impact over the long run.Spatially explicit prospective simulations of urban growth, up to the year 2030, were developed for both Kampala and Kigali to understand the impacts of flooding and land use regulations; additionally, a set of scenarios for Kampala was specified to explore the potential feedback effect between exposure to recurrent flooding and urban development patterns. The main lessons derived from these simulations were: in Kampala, which has until the present expanded without strong land use controls, the implementation stringent land use regulations (envisioned already in their strategic plans) would likely result in a more compact growth;...