Capacity Building for Disaster Mitigation in The Flood Plains Areas of Kogi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Capacity buildings in the built environment shut the laxity of urban control and regulatory compliance in developing areas. In Kogi State, Nigeria, they had been an urban chaos of natural disasters such as floods leading to deaths, destruction of houses, and properties in communities. This paper identifies and examines the potential hazards and risks precaution, focusing on the development of local stakeholders for threat identification, preparedness, strengths and weakness towards disaster mitigation in Nigeria. Quantitative data were collected using a structured questionnaire survey of building owners, residents, architects, engineers, surveyors, building supervisors, and building control officers with a valid percentage of 82% responses, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews and case study methods with aforementioned built environment relevant stakeholders in obtaining information on the necessity of capacity building to prevent or reduce the impact of disaster. Using SPSS for descriptive and inferential statistics analysis and the content analysis for qualitative data, the findings indicates that professionals in the built environment support the development of local communities and other stakeholders in identifying hazards, knowing who is at risk to be harmed, the precaution to be taken, record keeping, and periodic updating of the data. There was a capacity building gap for self-help disaster prevention and strengthening among the local communities as it relates to the built environment standards and regulations which will reduce the impacts of the hazard from the case studies. And the qualitative analysis revealed that there was sketchy information on previous data of disaster occurrences, awareness on preparedness, local infrastructures development and maintenance for standards and regulation compliance and control strategies are in dire needs of the local capacity building in Nigeria. Thus, the findings finally lead to the proposed recommendations uch as compulsory training to improve skills and knowledge of stakeholders, insurance policy education to create awareness, suspension of building approval within the areas, and training of vulnerable women and children for the local capacity building as a means of reducing the impacts of disasters in Nigeria.