Project Details
Title:
FloodWatch GH (Public Services)
Details:
Ghana's flood warnings from GMet, NADMO, and VRA often reach at-risk citizens too late, or not at all. Many people first learn of danger from social media after flooding has begun, and some move toward the danger instead of away from it. Rural, low-literacy, low-connectivity, and disabled residents are least reached and most exposed, and the result is preventable death, injury, and displacement each rainy season, most visibly in Accra's Odaw Basin, North and Central Tongu, Kumasi, and Tamale. The May 2025 Accra floods (5 dead, 3,000+ displaced) and the 2023 Akosombo dam spillage (31,000+ displaced) show the scale of the problem even where flood data already exists. Ghana is investing nationally through the World Bank-backed GARID drainage project and the GMet, NADMO, and NCA Early Warning for All (EW4All) roadmap, but neither closes the last-mile gap between forecasts and the people who must act on them, especially those without smartphones or internet access. FloodWatch GH addresses this gap directly: it turns flood data that already exists into calibrated, district-level risk alerts and protective guidance delivered on any phone, in local languages, by voice or text, with citizen reports verified against authoritative sources before broadcast.
Predict district-level flood risk 24 to 48 hours ahead, starting with four pilot districts (Greater Accra/Odaw Basin, North and Central Tongu, Kumasi, Tamale), using a calibrated gradient-boosting classifier trained on historical flood-occurrence records and rainfall data. (2) Reach every citizen, including feature-phone users, through SMS, USSD, cell broadcast, and IVR voice in major Ghanaian languages (Akan, Ewe, Dagbani, Ga, and others). (3) Verify citizen-submitted hazard reports against authoritative agency data before broadcasting them, to counter rumour and false alarms. (4) Give NADMO a single, auditable channel with human sign-off on every major alert, so accountability sits with a named officer rather than an automated system. (5) Prove the model and delivery channel in a working prototype, then move through a gated NADMO pilot before wider scale-up.
FloodWatch GH is built around Ghana's own institutions and constraints rather than a generic template. It is designed to plug into, not duplicate, the GMet/NADMO/NCA Early Warning for All roadmap and the NCA's National Emergency Telecommunications Plan, both launched in 2025. It targets Ghana's specific flood mechanisms: urban-pluvial drainage failure in Accra and Kumasi, riverine and dam-spillage flooding in the Tongus, and semi-arid flash flooding in Tamale. Delivery channels (SMS, USSD, cell broadcast, IVR) match Ghana's mobile phone penetration far more than smartphone-only apps, and alerts are planned in Akan, Ewe, Dagbani, Ga, and other major languages to reach citizens excluded by English-only or app-only systems. Data handling follows Ghana's Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), and district alert thresholds are set by NADMO officers, keeping decision authority inside the agency Ghanaians already look to during floods.