Health Performance Empirical Evaluation on Urban Housing Floods in Odosida, Ondo city, Nigeria

Abstract

Natural occurrence of streams, rivers and flowing water attract emergence of urban housing along river bank is to tap water for domestic, irrigation, industrial use; deposition of minerals and nutrients for agricultural purpose. Consequences caused by recent events of floods in the urban centers are not limited to socio-economic, environmental loss but also increase in health challenges with loss of life. Flood itself cannot be held responsible for the catastrophe but the activities of people, society and urban housing encroaching on natural space of lowland, wetland, prone areas, also; landscape reshape to reclaim beaches by cutting off hills fosters thereafter, destruction of life and property. The study therefore identified the consequences of urban housing flood in three areas. Quantitative method including frequency tables, histograms, pairwise ranking, chi-square and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were also used to interpret the data collected. The result shows that disease occurrence is significant to urban housing flood; correlation between flood and marginalization to adequate housing quality; and floods is significant to urban housing development. It is clear that vulnerable and flooded prone milieu is mostly occupied by urban poor because of inability to avoid good housing quality and there is high of cases of cholera, malarial, water-borne, measles among residents in the study area. Society is becoming more aware that floods can be controlled to a limited extent; hence, safety against floods must be sought for, to prevent loss of life, properties and socio-economic investment. This paper recommends absolute delineation from vulnerable area, government and property developers should ensure good housing quality, total relocation of urban housing from marginal land and compensation to victims. Studies on comparative evaluation of urban housing vulnerability to flood on highland and lowland; environmental disruption of urban housing in lowland require additional investigation.