Pre-feasibility study for water management/ green spaces and urban infrastructure

Potential climate/ disaster impacts addressed by approach & Justification for approach:

An estimation of 35.000 inhabitants of the city of Portoviejo are at high risk of flash floods and landslides resulting from heavy storms, which particularly affect the people living in the hilly suburbs. The city faces two major challenges to improve their stormwater management: 1) Lacking measuring equipment in the urban areas, 2) lacking funding and capacity to identify priority measures for the hills. Portoviejo seeks to establish a measurement network for meteorological, climatological, and hydrological data and to define priority actions for stormwater management and flood prevention in hilly suburbs along the Portoviejo River, including hybrid infrastructure (gabion walls and permeable parks, wetlands, and restoration). This is expected to generate better data for evidence-based decision-making. Short- and medium-term stormwater management is expected to increase the city's resilience. There also exist important synergies with the project "Corridor del Rio Portoviejo", which includes 7 urban parks along the river covering approx. 170 hectares, which has secured technical assistance from GIZ Ecuador. Both initiatives are complementary.