CAPACITY BUILDING ON COMMUNITY-BASED ADAPTATION IN THE RISK AND VULNERABLE AREAS TO EXTREME WEATHER IN MAE SOT SUB-WATERSHED, THAILAND
In Thailand the risk disaster early warning system has been designated by law to the department of the disaster prevention and mitigation. However, the representation of the department is only at the provincial level. The assistance from the department has been seen as not enough and not in time and communities were stimulated to recognize their own risk and the need to work together to solve or reduce the flood risk.
WACDEP in Thailand
Since 2014, Thai Water Partnership have worked together the civic group of Maesot and the key actors in 20 communities in the Mae Sot Municipality, a border town of Thailand and Myanmar in Tak Province. With the technical support from the Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Center (Northern Thailand), Faculty of Social Science, Chiang Mai University, they have established community flood early warning systems, to reduce the vulnerability of communities to extreme weather events.
For example, local groups were facilitated to conduct surveys of water ways with the aim to assess risk and for risk reduction planning. In addition, a free android based communication application (LINE), was introduced to the groups. It was used for communication between local groups, agencies and municipality representatives, presentation of results of local community work, and for local groups to access official information for early warning.