Beyond the Flood Line:

The book examines differential flood vulnerability in§the Limpopo Province of South Africa. It employs a§triangulation of methods within a PGIS methodology§and political ecology as the conceptual framework.§The main premise in this book is that household flood§vulnerability is socially constructed in that it is§mediated by locally contingent political,§socio-economic and environmental factors. As a§result, conventional solutions that focus mainly on§the physical event are ineffective and costly because§they ignore local knowledge about flood hazards and§flood coping mechanisms that have been disrupted or§destroyed.The book integrates historical and§contemporary flood experiences into a traditional GIS§database to study differential household flood§vulnerability. It also combines a quantitative§spatial analysis using household survey and§traditional GIS data with qualitative methods to§examine the local dynamics of flood vulnerability at§Milaboni and Dzingahe villages. PGIS provides the§framework to include socially differentiated local§knowledge while political ecology focuses the§analysis on how power relations impact household§flood vulnerability in the two study sites.