Drought Crisis at the Horn of Africa - Z_GIS supports humanitarian organization with information derived from satellite imagery

The severe drought at the Horn of Africa threatens millions of people and force them to flee. In Dadaab (Kenia) three refugee camps give temporary home to almost 400,000 people. The new arriving refugees pose a challenge for humanitarian organizations as they are settling uncoordinated on the outskirts of the camps and making water demand, a limited resource in this area, increasing.

In the frame of an existing cooperation with a globally active humanitarian organization, Z_GIS analysed one of the three refugee camps in Dadaab, Dagahaley, using very-high- and medium spatial resolution satellite imagery. Single dwellings were extracted semi-automatically from a WorldView-2 imagery to retrieve information on the spatial distribution of the refugees.

In addition a map of potential groundwater borehole sites was produced based on visual lineament analysis from Landsat imagery and a Digital Elevation Model incl. derivatives (e.g. hillshade, curvature), to give a first indication of suitable areas for boreholes.