{"id":28667,"date":"2026-02-03T21:46:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/?p=28667"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:46:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T18:46:41","slug":"siaya-buni-banda-and-experts-collaborate-on-multi-hazard-early-warning-system-design-for-climate-and-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/siaya-buni-banda-and-experts-collaborate-on-multi-hazard-early-warning-system-design-for-climate-and-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Siaya, Buni Banda, and Experts Collaborate on Multi-Hazard Early Warning System Design for Climate and Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Samson Wire
\n\"\"A three-day workshop to develop Siaya County's multi-hazard early warning system (EWS) kicked off today at Kababa Resort in Siaya town.<\/p>\n

The workshop brings together technical experts and participants from the Departments of Environment, Water, Climate Change, Irrigation and Natural Resources; Health and Sanitation; the Directorate of Disaster Management; Media; Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK); Administration; and the project team.<\/p>\n

The participants will focus on three key objectives to transition the county from single-hazard responses to a comprehensive, county-owned system that protects communities from multiple climate- and health-related risks.<\/p>\n

The objectives are:<\/p>\n

(1) To co-design a practical, county-owned, and developer-ready multi-hazard early warning system.<\/p>\n

(2)To strengthen Siaya's capacity to issue timely, trusted, and actionable multi-hazard warnings. This includes establishing clear rules and processes to ensure alerts for floods, extreme heat, climate-sensitive diseases, and other hazards are accurate, timely, actionable, and ultimately protect lives, health, and livelihoods.<\/p>\n

(3)To establish coordinated county systems for multi-sectoral disease alerts and decision-making. This involves defining roles, responsibilities, and approval processes across environment, health, disaster management, and administration departments to ensure multi-hazard warnings are managed efficiently, transparently, and with accountability.<\/p>\n

Another key objective is to deliver a practical, scalable, and ready-to-implement multi-hazard early warning system framework. This will include agreed workflows, trigger rules, and communication tools that can be directly translated into a functional county system capable of managing hazards through one coordinated platform.<\/p>\n

\"\"To identify the climatic and health hazards affecting communities, the project team conducted outreach in all six sub-counties over the last four months. The sampling used random scientific methods and included both men and women.<\/p>\n

The study combined qualitative hybrid approaches, drawing on formal scientific sources\u2014such as the Kenya Meteorological Department (for signs of flooding, rainfall patterns, and drought alerts), the Ministry of Health (for malaria prevalence and other diseases), and the Kenya Red Cross Society (for humanitarian insights)\u2014as well as community health promoters and indigenous knowledge.<\/p>\n

Traditional methods for identifying imminent floods included observing bird movements, rising river levels and bridge conditions, excessive heat, unusual wildlife patterns, changes in water color, and other local indicators.<\/p>\n

Key barriers identified included poverty limiting access to resources, lack of land for safe settlement or relocation, delayed evacuations, false alerts, challenges for the elderly and those with limited mobility, insufficient weather stations, and delayed messaging.<\/p>\n

Residents expressed high trust in Kenya Red Cross alerts. Radio was a primary channel for reaching large audiences, while community leaders, chiefs, and their assistants were highly trusted sources of information and alerts.<\/p>\n

Recommendations from the study included using local languages, targeting specific villages and wards, repeating alerts, relying on chiefs and community leaders for dissemination, blending scientific and indigenous knowledge, and pre-deploying disaster response teams to shift from reactive to proactive approaches.<\/p>\n

The system, currently in its piloting stage, will feature user-specific logins and admin controls to prevent unauthorized access or AI interference. It will be protected by firewalls and other security measures to mitigate external attacks and hacking.<\/p>\n

The design will include distinct modules to capture weather and health data, enabling accurate predictions and helping to avoid risks that could disrupt operations.<\/p>\n

This climate and health early warning system will serve as a proactive tool to detect and guide responses to future hazards. It will help the County Government and residents prepare for and mitigate disasters rather than react after calamities occur. The system will also promote education on appropriate remedies and enable quick, coordinated responses by the county government and its partners for the benefit of its people.<\/p>\n

\"\"The official opening was graced by the County Government of Siaya team, led by the County Executive Committee Member for Environment, Water, Irrigation, Climate Change, and Natural Resources, Prof. Jacqueline Oduol, who represented Governor James Orengo.<\/p>\n

The project team includes Dr. Catherine Kidiga and Fredrick Odongo from Buni Banda; Dr. Daniel Kwaro from KEMRI; Jack Owuor from the County Climate Change Committee; Joseph Agunda (Indigenous Technical Knowledge); various county directors; Domnick Arodi (Meteorological Department); Christine Omondi (Public Communications, Civic Education, and Petitions); Dr. Kennedy Oruenjo (Public Health); Sammy Inyasi (ICT); media practitioners; and community representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Samson Wire A three-day workshop to develop Siaya County’s multi-hazard early warning system (EWS) kicked off today at Kababa Resort in Siaya town. The workshop brings together technical experts and participants from the Departments of Environment, Water, Climate Change, Irrigation and Natural Resources; Health and Sanitation; the Directorate of Disaster Management; Media; Indigenous Technical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":28671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/siaya.go.ke\/siaya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}