Lecture

Case Study: Flood Risk in Niamey

Graph Chat

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

Description

This lecture explores the spatial evaluation of flood risk in Niamey, a Sahelian city in Niger, using Geographic Information Systems. It covers the challenges posed by frequent floods, the impact on the population, infrastructure, and the environment, and the measures for risk management. The analysis includes factors like topography, hydrology, and meteorology, leading to the mapping of flood-prone areas and the dynamics of land use over time.

In MOOC

Geographical Information Systems 2

The second part of the course deals with spatial analysis methods and georeferenced information representation techniques. In particular, you will learn how to:

Analyze the spatial properties of discrete variables, for example by quantifying spatial autocorrelation;
Work with continuous variables (sampling, interpolation and construction of isolines)
Use digital elevation models (DEMs) and their derivatives (slope, orientation, etc.);
Use geodata superposition techniques;
Produce cartographic docu

Official source

Quiz

Related concepts (32)

Geographic information system

A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.

Flood

A flood is an overflow of water (or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrology and are of significant concern in agriculture, civil engineering and public health. Human changes to the environment often increase the intensity and frequency of flooding, for example land use changes such as deforestation and removal of wetlands, changes in waterway course or flood controls such as with levees, and larger environmental issues such as climate change and sea level rise.

Niger

Niger or the Niger (niːˈʒɛər,_ˈnaɪdʒər , niʒɛʁ), officially the Republic of the Niger (République du Niger; Jamhuriyar Nijar), is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is a unitary state bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria to the south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the southwest, Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. It covers a land area of almost , making it the largest landlocked country in West Africa. Over 80% of its land area lies in the Sahara.

Geographic information science

Geographic information science (GIScience, GISc) or geoinformation science is a scientific discipline at the crossroads of computational science, social science, and natural science that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans understand the world, and how it can be captured, organized, and analyzed. It is a sub-field of geography, specifically part of technical geography.

Topography

Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary science and is concerned with local detail in general, including not only relief, but also natural, artificial, and cultural features such as roads, land boundaries, and buildings.

Related lectures (59)

Isovalues: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 2

Introduces isolines and demonstrates their creation in QGIS.

Flood Risk in Niamey MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 2

Explores flood risk assessment in Niamey using GIS and discusses control measures.

Flood Risk in Niamey

Examines flood risk assessment in Niamey using Geographic Information Systems and highlights the need for localized risk management.

Metadata: Introduction to Geographic Information Systems MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 1

Covers the importance of metadata in geoinformation and international standards like ISO/TC 211 and the INSPIRE directive.

Components and Functions of the Map MOOC: Geographical Information Systems 2