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19 December 2018 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Leonie Bolleurs
Water management reseachers
Marinda Avenant, Dirk Jungman and Niels Schütze are working on a project proposal for a decision support system that will assist local authorities with sustainable water resources management. Both Dirk and Niels are from the Technical University Dresden in Germany.

Climate change has a strong effect on the water cycle and is likely to lead to a multitude of hazardous weather events such as droughts, heavy rainfall and floods in Southern Africa.

The Technical University of Dresden, in Germany, in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Management at the University of the Free State (UFS), earlier this year received seed funding to develop a project proposal for a study on the risks of climate change.

At a recent workshop, universities (including the Central University of Technology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of Pretoria, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the Namibia University of Science and Technology), Weather SA and the Global Water Partnership of Southern Africa) as well as companies from the public and private sectors and universities in Germany (Technical University Dresden, United Nations University Flores, Büro für Angewandte Hydrologie, and WISUTEC Chemnitz), collaborated to discuss the project proposal.

The proposal to obtain funding for the study will be submitted in May 2019.

 

Managing water resources

Once funding is obtained, the combined team will study a series of sites in the upper (Qwaqwa), middle (Free State Goldfields) and lower Vaal catchment areas. The aim of this three-year project is to prepare climatic, hydrological and ecological models as a basis for the development of a decision support system (DSS). This simple-to-use DSS is intended to assist local authorities with sustainable water resources management, as well as to address the risks associated with future climate change in their regions.

The study is titled: Threats of droughts and floods: investigating resilience to the multiple risks of climate change in Southern Africa and the study area was chosen for its suitability in terms of non-perenniality of rivers, residual impacts of mining, climate change, urbanisation, the poor quality of water, major modification of natural ecosystems, as well as poverty and joblessness.

According to Marinda Avenant, lecturer in the Centre for Environmental Management, increasing hazards can result in additional ecological, social and economic impacts and risks such as asset damage, yield reduction and decrease of livelihoods for the region. “We intend to produce a tool to support decision-making and risk-management by means of easily understandable guidelines to consider threats of droughts and floods under climate-change conditions of mining-contaminated, non-perennial river systems,” said Avenant.

 

Reliable forecasts

 

A web-based data platform to provide reliable forecasts of disaster risk and effective warnings of multiple hazardous weather events will also be developed to support resilient management strategies and to trigger risk reduction behaviour.

News Archive

Kovsies proud of a gold PRISM Award for safety campaign
2015-05-05

Stefan Lotter, Leonie Bolleurs and Lacea Loader. All three are from the Departement of Communication and Brand Management at the UFS.
Photo: Hannes Pieterse

The University of the Free State, takes pride in the gold PRISM Award (from the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa) for the B Safe Take Action safety campaign that has been rolled out on the campus since 2013 by the Department of Communication and Brand Management.

The campaign earned the Von H Brand Provocateur gold award in the internal communication category.

“The UFS is the only tertiary institution to receive a gold award. The award is a great honour for the department, considering the cream of South African public relations took part in the competition, and the standard was naturally very high. It was also a feather in the cap for us that the uniqueness of the campaign received national recognition from our peers in this manner, said Ms Lacea Loader, Director: Communication and Brand Management at the UFS.

The university is responsible for about 32 000 students and 4 000 members of staff on its three campuses: the Bloemfontein and South Campuses in Bloemfontein and the Qwaqwa Campus in the Eastern Free State. It is of cardinal importance for the university that its students, staff, and assets are safe.

Apart from safety measures that have been implemented by the UFS Protection Services, the B Safe Take Action campaign has also been rolled out on the three campuses of the UFS. The campaign supports the safety strategy of the university. It is aimed at developing a culture of safety awareness in students and staff alike. The purpose of the campaign is for staff and students to take ownership of their own safety. In addition, it creates awareness of the safety measures that are in place at the UFS.

The campaign has been rolled out on various communication platforms. These include placards, pamphlets, lamp-post advertisements, an advertisement board, emails, and messages on student communication portals such as Blackboard, the UFS web and intranet, social media, information boards in the campus parking areas and on the pedestrian walkways as well as messages on refuse bins around the campus. “The fact that a variety of communication platforms has been deployed, the striking design and character of the messages, and the number of target audiences that have been reached further contributed to the success of the campaign,” said Ms Loader,

The campaign also received a merit award from the International Association for Business Communication (IABC). The award will be presented on 15 June 2015 in San Francisco, USA.

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