Urban Strategies for Onaville, Haiti (TUM-USO)

Urban Strategies for Onaville is the inter-disciplinary project platform of so far seven TU München Master- and one PhD-student within the study areas of landscape architecture, urbanism, and environmental engineering. A student initiated cooperation with the Port-au-Prince-based Non-Profit Organization TECHO Haïti and grants from DAAD enable information-exchange, research visits, volunteer engagement, and coordination with local community initiatives and neighborhood committees since late 2012.

Subject of research is the rise of Canaan in the aftermath of 2010 earthquake, a vast unplanned urbanization north-east of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. In 2013 the area is expected to host 300,000 people with more than 10,000 in TUM-USO focus area Onaville, where the seasonal river Ravine Madanièl (also called Ravine Lan Couline) poses a large flood related risk.^[1] Having environmental hazards, huge deficits in basic infrastructure, and characteristic, unplanned development, Onaville was chosen to elaborate trans-disciplinary approaches for locally adapted, strategic urban and environmental development planning. TUM-USO investigates in remote modeling and local field work if economically, environmentally and socially integrative development and improvement of living conditions in marginalized neighborhoods become possible – when academia promotes research, mutual learning, as well as citizen empowerment and community-based action in open-ended multi-stakeholder processes.^[2] Research results are shared with key actors from Haitian Government and the "International Community", NGOs, local administration, and especially with local leaders and residents. In field workshops findings have been brought back to the community and verified.^[3] Improved flood risk modelling and testing of flood protection infrastructure variants performed based on UAV-Data from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap and IOM GIS-Unit^[4] revealed that Onaville and Canaan is exposed to high flooding risk: In a 100 year event, over 3200 buildings (about 15.000 persons – when stating average Haitian household size of 4.5 persons) would be affected by the powerful flows of Ravine Madanièl. A 5 year event would still endanger about 350 houses and shacks (about 1.600 persons).^[5]

Organizational Framework

The project is a collaboration between the TU München Chairs of Landscape Architecture and Public Space (Prof. Regine Keller), Sustainable Urbanism (Prof. Mark Michaeli), Urban Water Systems Engineering (Prof. Jörg E. Drewes), Hydrology and River Basin Management (Prof. Markus Disse), Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management (Prof. Peter Rutschmann), and Prof. Christian Werthmann (TUM-IAS Hans Fischer Senior Fellow and professor for Landscape Architecture and Design at ILA, University of Hannover). Further technical assistance has been provided by Prof. Dr. Boris Schröder (Department of Ecology and Ecosystemmanagement, TU München).

Research themes

• María Alejandra Casanova (Master of Sustainable Resource Management): Sanitation Strategy for Onaville (Thesis completed)
• Bjarne Bächle (Master of Civil Engineering): Identification of Suitable Structural Flood Mitigation Measures for the Informal Settlement Onaville (Haiti) with Particular Regard to Local Terms and Conditions (Thesis completed)
• Raphaela Guin (Master of Architectural Urbanism): Urban Catalyzers—Places for the Community (Thesis completed)
• Johann-Christian Hannemann (Master of Urbanism): Cooperative neighborhood action in Onaville, Haiti—Designing a process for urban development and environmental hazard mitigation in a rapidly urbanizing settlement (Thesis completed)
• Valentin Heimhuber (Master of Environmental Engineering): GIS-Based Flood Modeling as Part of an Integrated Development Strategy for Informal Settlements—A Case study in Applying GIS (ArcMap) in Combination with Hydrologic (HEC-HMS) and Hydraulic (HEC-RAS) Modeling Software to Estimate the Flood Risk of Onaville—Canaan—Haiti (Thesis completed)
• Gokce Iyicil (Workgroup for Advanced Water Treatment and Water Recycling, Chair of Urban Water Systems Engineering): Strategic Implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management: Opportunities and Challenges to Safe Water, Drainage and Sanitation in the Canaan Tent City, Haiti (Thesis canceled)
• Sean Kerwin (Master of Environmental Engineering): Drainage, Water and Sanitation Infrastructure Improvement in Impoverished Areas—A Case Study of Onaville, Haiti (Thesis completed)
• Wolfgang Krötzinger (Master of Environmental Engineering): Flash Flood Modeling and Sediment Analysis for the Evaluation of Mitigation Measures at an Ephemeral Stream in Canaan, Haiti (Thesis completed)

References

1. Heimhuber, Valentin; Hannemann, Johann-Christian; Rieger, Wolfgang (2015-07-14). "Flood Risk Management in Remote and Impoverished Areas—A Case Study of Onaville, Haiti". Water 7 (7): 3832–3860. doi:10.3390/w7073832.
2. "International Center: Projekte - TUM ohne Grenzen". www.international.tum.de. Retrieved 2015-11-23.
3. Hannemann, Johann-Christian; Werthmann, Christian; Hauck, Thomas (2014). "Designing for Uncertainty: The Case of Canaan, Haiti". In Czechowski, Daniel; et al. Revising Green Infrastructure – Concepts Between Nature and Design. Boca Raton: CRC Press. pp. 323–355. ISBN 9781482232202.
4. "UAV-HAITI - OpenStreetMap Wiki". wiki.openstreetmap.org. Retrieved 2015-11-07.
5. "Flood Hazard Map of Ravine Madanièl (Ravine Lan Couline / Ravine Madanèl) - uMap". umap.openstreetmap.fr. Retrieved 2016-04-27.