Taking the HIGHWAY to Save Lives on Lake Victoria

Abstract

Up to one thousand drowning deaths occur every year on Lake Victoria in East Africa. Nocturnal thunderstorms are one of the main culprits for the high winds and waves that cause fishing boats to capsize. The HIGHWAY project was established to develop an Early Warning System for Lake Victoria. Prior to HIGHWAY, weather forecasts for the lake were overly general and not trusted. Under the HIGHWAY project, forecasters from weather service offices in East Africa worked with leaders of fishing communities and Beach Management Units to develop marine forecasts and hazardous-weather warnings that were meaningful to fishermen and other stakeholders. Forecasters used high-resolution satellite, radar, and lightning observations collected during a HIGHWAY field campaign, along with guidance from numerical weather prediction models and a 4.4-km resolution Tropical Africa model, to produce specific forecasts and warnings for 10 zones over the lake. Forecasts were communicated to thousands of people by radio broadcasters, local intermediaries, and via smartphones using the WhatsApp application. Fishermen, ferry-boat operators, and lakeside communities used the new marine forecasts to plan their daytime and nighttime activities on the lake. A socio-economic benefits study conducted by HIGHWAY found that ~75% of the people are now using the forecasts to decide if and when to travel on the lake. Significantly, a 30% reduction in drowning fatalities on the lake is likely to have occurred, which when combined with the reduction in other weather-related losses, generates estimated socio-economic benefits of $44M/year due to the HIGHWAY project activities; the new marine forecasts and warnings are helping to save lives and property.

Climate change: A pointer to increased small-scale fisher drowning deaths

“…Communities in the Lake Victoria basin lack effective weather advisory and warning systems [ 21 ]. However, our stakeholder analysis and other studies in the Lake Victoria region [ 21 , 48 ] indicate that weather warning systems present an opportunity to counter drowning risks in response to escalating climate change-related extreme weather events [ 9 , 13 , 14 ].…”

“…As Nile perch ( Lates niloticus ), a key commercial fish species, has declined [ 19 ], fishers have increasingly turned to a sardine-like species omena ( Rastrineobola argentea ) [ 20 ]. Omena are fished far offshore, and at night when lights are used to illuminate their food sources and thereby attract fish [ 21 ]. However, thunderstorms are most likely to occur at night [ 13 ], and visibility is limited, increasing the risk of collision and poor navigation, all of which make fishers more vulnerable to drowning.…”

Pulling It All Together, End-to-End

“…However, such studies make the assumption that each of the cases represents the whole population of events before and after the introduction, respectively, and that nothing else has happened to change people's response to the event, despite the fact that the trauma of the event that precipitated the warning system almost certainly changed behaviour in those affected. Where events are sufficiently frequent, it is possible to compare aggregate statistics before and after introduction of a warning system, as in the HIGHWAY project to provide user-oriented warnings to fishermen on Lake Victoria (Roberts et al 2021).…”

Convective systems and rainfall in East Africa

“…Severe weather over Lake Victoria causes thousands of deaths by drowning each year (e.g. Kobusingye et al ., 2016; Whitworth et al ., 2019), and the broader region suffers some of the highest occurrences of both flood disasters and deaths due to flood disasters in Africa (Li et al ., 2016; Watkiss and Cimato, 2021; Roberts et al ., 2022). Climate change is likely to exacerbate these problems, with the frequency of heavy rainfall events in East Africa expected to increase (Bornemann et al ., 2019).…”