Floods in Africa

Flood in Africa: Regional Patterns and Insights

• Frequent and Intense Flooding: Africa experiences frequent and severe flooding, particularly during the rainy seasons, which vary across regions but generally occur between April and October.

• River Systems at Play: With numerous major river systems like the Nile, Congo, and Niger, Africa is highly susceptible to flooding when seasonal rains are heavy.

• Major Flood Events: Some of the most devastating floods in Africa’s recent history include the 2000 Mozambique floods, which displaced hundreds of thousands and caused extensive damage to homes and agriculture.

• Impact on Property and Infrastructure: Flooding can heavily damage homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, disrupting local communities and economies.

• Climate Change Effects: Climate change is worsening the situation, bringing more intense rainfall and rising sea levels that heighten flood risks across the continent.

Data Source

The information on this page is sourced from:

• Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT): Comprehensive data on flood events and impacts, available at www.emdat.be.

Explore Our Visualizations

Discover our interactive dashboards created to help you analyze flood patterns across Africa. These tools provide data on flood occurrences, total affected populations, disaster origins, and the most impacted regions over recent years.

Dashboard Features

• Key Metrics:

• Total Affected Population: Displays the number of people impacted by floods.

• Total Deaths: Highlights the fatalities caused by flood events.

Interactive Exploration:

• Clickable Visualizations: Click on elements to dive deeper into specific data points, such as regional impacts.

• Dynamic Filters: Customize your view by selecting timeframes, flood types, and affected areas.

• Subregion Filter: Choose from various subregions within Africa to focus your analysis on specific areas.

• Year Selection: Easily adjust the view to specific years to track trends over time.

• Geographical Mapping:
  Visualize the distribution and severity of floods across different African countries.

• Trends and Comparisons:
  Analyze trends in flood occurrences and impacts through various chart types.

Our Tableau dashboards provide a user-friendly experience, allowing you to gain valuable insights into Africa’s flood challenges effectively.

Visualization Dashboard: Explore flood trends across Africa with filters to select regions, disaster and types to see patterns.

Association Rules Analysis

In this analysis, we can sort the rules by decreasing support or confidence.

Support refers to the proportion of transactions in the dataset that contain a specific rule. It indicates how frequently the rule applies in the dataset. A higher support value suggests that the rule is more relevant.

Confidence measures the reliability of the inference made by the rule. It indicates the likelihood of the consequent occurring given that the antecedent is present. A higher confidence value signifies that the rule has a strong predictive power.

For example, the following rule can be interpreted as:
Rule: Origin=Heavy rain, Total Affected=Severe Impact, Country=Nigeria → Disaster Subtype=Riverine flood

Interpretation: This rule suggests that when there is heavy rain and severe impacts in Nigeria, there is a high likelihood that the disaster subtype will be classified as a riverine flood. The support and confidence values associated with this rule would quantify how often this scenario occurs in the dataset and how reliable this prediction is based on historical data.

Association Rule Dashboard: Dive into detailed insights, discovering associations such as which flood causes are linked to high-impact events in certain regions.

Get Involved

We encourage users to explore the visualizations and association rules to gain a comprehensive view of flood risks across Asia and identify ways to contribute to greater resilience.