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<p>Rapid urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has intensified flood risks, disproportionately affecting deprived urban areas (DUAs). Yet, these areas remain systematically unmapped in existing assessments, particularly in data-scarce environments. This study is among the first to center DUAs within a comparative flood exposure assessment across SSA cities, while integrating a lightweight low-cost flood model, global remote sensing datasets and citizen science methods. We find that DUAs are up to 200% more exposed to flooding, with frequent shallow floods (up to 10 cm) causing significant, yet often overlooked, impacts. Of these, over 50% concern property damage, disease outbreaks and infrastructure failures. Surprisingly, secondary cities sometimes surpass primaries in absolute exposure. We also highlight the spatial biases from built-up surface datasets, in turn overestimating exposure in peri-urban areas and omitting dense DUAs. Our findings challenge conventional ways of assessing flood risk and emphasize that local knowledge is indispensable in fostering urban resilience.</p>

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Exposed yet unmapped: evidence of differential flood exposure in deprived urban areas using citizen science

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月22日

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  • Lorraine Trento Oliveira,
  • Florencio V. Campomanes,
  • Anne M. Dijkstra,
  • Mariana Belgiu,
  • Prosper Adiku,
  • Nicera Wanjiru,
  • Lizian Onyango,
  • Renaldo Flor,
  • Deyril Ibraimo,
  • Bastian van den Bout,
  • Jaap A. Zevenbergen,
  • Monika Kuffer

摘要

Rapid urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has intensified flood risks, disproportionately affecting deprived urban areas (DUAs). Yet, these areas remain systematically unmapped in existing assessments, particularly in data-scarce environments. This study is among the first to center DUAs within a comparative flood exposure assessment across SSA cities, while integrating a lightweight low-cost flood model, global remote sensing datasets and citizen science methods. We find that DUAs are up to 200% more exposed to flooding, with frequent shallow floods (up to 10 cm) causing significant, yet often overlooked, impacts. Of these, over 50% concern property damage, disease outbreaks and infrastructure failures. Surprisingly, secondary cities sometimes surpass primaries in absolute exposure. We also highlight the spatial biases from built-up surface datasets, in turn overestimating exposure in peri-urban areas and omitting dense DUAs. Our findings challenge conventional ways of assessing flood risk and emphasize that local knowledge is indispensable in fostering urban resilience.