Correlation between flooding and settlement planning in Nairobi

Abstract

Globally, climate change triggers flooding through unpredictable, intermittent and incessant precipitation. Flooding in Nairobi is multi-factorial in causation. This has raised the question of necessary interventions in the design of urban settlements in order to reduce the impacts of extreme rainfall events that result in floods. This paper seeks to analyse the reciprocal correlation between settlement planning and pluvial flooding in Nairobi. Census data were obtained from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and daily rainfall records from the Kenya Meteorological Department spanning from 1961 to 2018. Other key parameters were drawn from extensive thematic content analyses of the existing literature. The data were subjected to trend and correlation analyses using the Stata software to determine patterns and possible causal relationships. The results showed that there was an insignificant but positive relationship between the two variables with Pearson and Spearman coefficients of correlation of 0.211 and 0.111, respectively. The results of this study repudiate the perceived notion that occurrences of pluvial flooding in Nairobi have increased due to erratic precipitation patterns and improper planning of settlements. The null hypothesis is therefore upheld at 95% confidence level.

Settlement patterns in the rain flooding of the metropolitan nucleos of a city in northern Perú

“…En los resultados obtenidos, se demuestra la tendencia de la urbanización con un índice alto de impermeabilización, lo cual ha encauzado el escurrimiento superficial; asimismo, el emplazamiento formal en áreas con riesgo de inundación ha contribuido en la impermeabilización a través de la aceleración del sellado del suelo, dada la vulnerabilidad del asentamiento informal (Ortíz, 2020). Por ende, este incremento ha facultado un paisaje de superficie concreta en suelos que en algún momento fueron permeables (p.1082) (Owuor et al, 2022). Este paisaje del concreto y el asfalto que caracteriza a la habilitación urbana desconfigura el relieve natural de la superficie perdiendo así las condiciones naturales del lugar anteriores a la ciudad formal que eran favorables al drenaje.…”