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Flood risk modeling for Kisumu County; Kenya: integrating multi-source geospatial data and machine learning

delete2026-08-11
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OA
AI
H
HA Herine Auma *
M
MG Michael Gebreslasie
A
AO Anne Osio
DOI:10.3389/fenvs.2026.1829199delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
IntroductionFlooding poses an escalating threat to Kisumu County; Kenya; driven by climate change and rapid urbanization.MethodsThis study develops an integrated framework combining remote sensing; GIS; and machine learning for flood risk mapping and forecasting using multi‐source geospatial data (Sentinel‐1 SAR; Landsat 8; SRTM DEM; SMAP soil moisture) and meteorological data (2014‐2025). Four machine learning models random forest (RF); artificial neural network (ANN); deep neural network (DNN); and convolutional neural network (CNN) were developed and validated.ResultsThe ANN achieved the highest accuracy (R2 = 0.910; RMSE = 0.038). Excluding RF (R2 = 0.520) from the ensemble improved performance to R2 = 0.916 (RMSE = 0.035); a 22% error reduction. Flood risk mapping classified Kisumu County into five categories; revealing that 40.9% (857.8 km2) faces moderate to very high risk; with critical hotspots along the Lake Victoria shoreline and in Kisumu City and Ahero. Slope (20%); NDBI (15%); soil moisture (15%); and stream proximity (15%) were identified as dominant flood drivers. Uncertainty quantification revealed low model variance (R2 σ = 0.006) and demonstrated that aleatoric uncertainty (62%) dominates epistemic uncertainty (38%).Discussion/ConclusionThis framework provides a replicable; data‐driven methodology for flood risk assessment in data‐scarce regions globally.
Keywords:
uncertainty quantification
remote sensing
GIS
ensemble methods for classification
flood risk modeling
Lake Victoria (East Africa)
machine learning-based classification

Journal

Frontiers in Environmental Science cover
Frontiers in Environmental Science
IF:
3.7
Papers:
7.9K
Citations:
2.3W

Organization

S
school of agriculture
Scholars:
97
Papers: 140
Citations: 2
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