Andy-Ob454/geodev-accra-flooding.

# Accra Flood Exposure — GeoDev Lab Africa, Cohort One **Project owner:** Andy Asamoah Bimpong **Programme:** GeoDev Lab Africa, Cohort One **Repo:** geodev-accra-flooding ## The question Which neighbourhoods in Accra sit in flood-prone, low-lying zones — and how does that exposure relate to the city's drainage network and road infrastructure? ## Why this question Accra floods almost every rainy season — 2015 (over 150 deaths, GOIL station explosion), 2016, and 2023 (major event at Kwame Nkrumah Circle). It's caused by low-lying terrain along the Odaw River basin combined with inadequate drainage, blocked gutters, and construction in waterways. It's well-documented, recurring, and has real accessible data — which makes it sustainable for a twelve-month project rather than a one-off report. ## Datasets | Dataset | What it gives you | Source | |---|---|---| | OSM road & waterway network for Ghana | Roads, drainage channels, the Odaw River, buildings — the vector base layer | download.geofabrik.de (download `ghana-latest-free.shp.zip` or `.gpkg.zip`, clip to Accra in Weeks 2–3) | | Digital Elevation Model (SRTM, 30m) | Terrain elevation — needed to find low-lying, flood-prone areas | Google Earth Engine (`USGS/SRTMGL1_003`), or earthexplorer.usgs.gov | | Satellite-detected flood extent, Oct 2023 (UNOSAT/HDX) | An actual observed flood footprint over Greater Accra & Volta Region, from Sentinel-1 imagery — ground truth to check theory against reality | data.humdata.org (shapefile: `FL20231018GHA_SHP.zip`) | ## What you'll have by end of week - [X] GitHub repo created, initialized, first commit pushed - [X] Project brief committed as README.md, with the three dataset links above - [x] Datasets downloaded locally (not committed — `data/README.md` explains what's excluded and why)