El Niño and Flash Floods in Peru: Bringing Knowledge on “Furia de los Rios” and “Western Science” to Understand Lag Time

This project seeks to bridge disciplinary divides to better understand the lag time between peak rainfall and peak flow (occurrence of flash flood) when anticipatory policy action can be taken to reduce damage and destruction. The research team is looking to examine how local and cultural knowledge production on disasters takes place and bring it into conversation with hydrological analysis that has traditionally dominated knowledge production on lag times. The field site for this project will be Piura, a city on the north coast of Peru, with a rich history of local and indigenous knowledge on floods, that still continues to be devastated by floods on a regular basis.

Principal Investigator: Dr Ayesha Siddiqi, University of Cambridge