Armed with smartphones, Niger youths map flood risks

Fatima Alher watches her step, careful not to sink knee-deep in the water flooding the rice fields of Kirkisoy, a neighbourhood in Niger’s capital. Her colleagues help lift her over the biggest puddles — a task complicated by the fact that they barely take their eyes off their smartphones. “Never without a phone, that’s our motto,” Alher says. Flooding has killed at least 56 people and destroyed thousands of homes since the rainy season began in June, according to the interior ministry. Efforts to rebuild flood-hit areas are not progressing fast enough, residents complain.

But since July, a team of 20 “investigators” from OpenStreetMap Niger — a community of students and young professionals who are developing a digital map of the country — have been plotting floodprone areas on their smartphones in two of Niamey’s districts.

“Flooding devastates the country every year, and yet no effort has been made to chart the most vulnerable areas,” Alher, a geography student and leader of the group, said.

Using GeoODK, an app that allows users to collect geo-referenced information, researchers gather details such as the number of residents and buildings, construction materials used and the location of electric poles. “By the end of August we had drawn up a list of 15,000 properties and buildings,” Alher said. “We then send the data to the interior ministry, so it can better target its relief efforts in times of flooding.”

The three-month initiative is managed by the government Disaster Risk Management and Urban Development Project, and funded by the World Bank.

Standing in the middle of his flooded rice fields, Mohamed Moktar Innocent says he has given up planting anything this season, and expects further flooding to wipe out what little harvest he has left.

Researchers from OpenStreetMap researchers have plotted his fields, which Innocent hopes will allow him to understand when it might be safe to start planting.

Once the data has been collected and analysed, the mapping project aims to alert populations living in particularly flood-prone areas.

The OpenStreetMap project says it is the first of its kind to map floodprone areas in Niger, but other initiatives in the area aim to prevent flooding and minimise any damage.

One of them has set up an information network among 136 villages, with field agents regularly travelling between flood- or drought-hit zones and the capital.