ICT Readiness for Flood Risk Reduction and Management: Lessons from Eastern Cape Province’s Port St Johns Municipality, South Africa

Abstract

The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa experienced severe floods in April 2019 and the negative impacts were significant. This chapter seeks to determine information communication and technology (ICT) readiness for flood risk reduction and management at the local municipality of Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape Province. The chapter further investigates the resilience of ICT infrastructure to flooding. ICT in this article refers to technology used for regular, everyday tasks like sending emails; making video calls; searching on the internet; using a tablet or mobile phone and even the older technology, like TVs and radios. The data was collected mainly through a household questionnaire survey. This was complemented by means of document analysis and field observations. The key findings were that the mobile phone was the most prevalent ICT device followed by TV and radio. Several barriers to the effective use of ICT for flood risk reduction and management were observed and these included the lack of capacity to buy data, the availability of a reliable network and low levels of literacy of the elderly. Since South Africa and the world are moving swiftly in scaling up the use of mobile phones, for flood risk reduction and management, this implies that network coverage be improved at the municipality of Port St Johns. Community training tailor-made for flood and other disaster risk reductions and management should also be introduced.