Multi return periods flood hazards and risks assessment in the Congo River Basin

Flood disasters have regularly been reported in the Congo Basin with significant damages to human lives, food production systems and infrastructure. Losses incurred by these damages are huge and represent a major challenge for economic expansion in developing nations. In the Congo River Basin, where availability of in-situ data is a significant challenge, new approaches are needed to investigate flood risks and enable effective management strategies. This study uses recently developed global flood prediction data in order to produce flood risk maps for the Congo River Basin, where flood information currently does not exist. Flood hazard maps that estimate fluvial flooding at a grid cell resolution of 3 arc-seconds (~ 90 m), gridded population density data of 1 arc-second (~ 30 m) spatial resolution, and a spatial layer of infrastructure dataset are used to addresses flood risk at the scale of the Congo Basin. The global flood data provides different return periods of exposure to flooding in the Congo Basin and identifies flood extents. The risk analysis results are presented in terms of the percentage of population and infrastructure at flood risk for six return periods (5, 10, 20, 50, 75 and 100 year). Of the 525 administrative territories, 374 are AGU Books