Disaster Risk Reduction Strategies and Vulnerability by Household Level: The Case of River Shabelle, Beledweyne District, Hiiraan Region, Hirshabelle State, Somalia

Somalia has been powerful river floods with danger frequently when the floods reach the center of the town it causes tremendous losses. This article examines river flood risk, vulnerability and risk reduction strategies and challenges along of River Shebelle, Beledweyne District, Hiiraan Region, Hirshabelle State, Somalia. Household survey, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and field observation were employed to gather data for the study. Both descriptive and inf erential were used to analyze data. The investigations were complemented with review of past records of flooding. The main objective of this study is to examine the River flood risk, vulnerability and risk reduction strategies by rural households in River Shebelle of Beledweyne District. This study employed primary and secondary sources of data in order to achieve the stated objectives. M ixed research design was used to collect and present data collected from selected households. The results are presented using statistical package for social sciences version 20, Statistical Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s Slope Estimator test using XLSTATA 2014 software and Arc GIS to produce maps were used. Using the systematic sampling technique, 335 households were selected from selected areas. The findings of the study indicated that river Shebelle flood has discharge variation, exposing the people to felt safe, awareness and participation of the community regarding to flood risk and vulnerability is different to respond effectively and which exposes to the hazard, there is the limitation of capacity to perform reduction strategies in effective way, inadequate and slow distribution of resources. Awareness creation, training and promoting Nan Governmental Organizations effort to involve in flood risk and vulnerability helps to solve the problem of flood risk and vulnerability reduction strategies in the study area.