Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions, on the 8th of October 2020, a virtual Kick-off meeting was held to officially start the PARADeS project in Ghana. Besides the consortium partners, institutions that also participated were the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster (BBK), the Merian Insititute of Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) of the University of Ghana: project cooperation partner, the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) and the Hydrological Services Department (HSD) of Ghana.
The purpose of the meeting was to have cordial interactions between the partners and stakeholders, establish a common understanding of the project aims, discuss collaborations and communication strategies, and to define the key activities for the next steps. The kick-off meeting provided an opportunity to present and discuss the results of the definition phase with the consortium.
The University of Bonn presented the main activities and the findings of the definition phase, which can also be found in the following publication.
“Almoradie, A., Brito, M. de, Evers, M., Bossa, A., Lumor, M., Norman, C., Yacouba, Y., J. Hounkpe (2020): Current flood risk management practices in Ghana: Gaps and opportunities for improving resilience. Journal of Flood Risk Management. doi: 10.1111/jfr3.12664.”
During the kick-off meeting, key findings of the definition phase were further emphasized by some of the partners followed by an open discussion. Such findings that were discussed were on the sustainability of project outcomes, the inclusion of cascading risk of floods, and integration of the Governance perspectives in disaster risk reduction (DRR). In the discussion, the consortium mentioned that indeed these are important issues that need to be addressed in the PARADeS project to make substantial knowledge-based recommendations for an enhanced flood disaster risk management (FDRM) in Ghana. The PARADeS consortium then presented how these key issues are addressed in the project.