Digital Earth Africa Launches Groundbreaking Waterbodies Monitoring Service for Continent-Wide Impact

Key Highlights

• Digital Earth Africa has launched the Waterbodies Monitoring Service, a global first specifically developed for the African continent. 
• The service redefines the use of satellite Earth observation data, offering innovative packaging, easy access, and advanced analysis to assess and monitor surface water across the entire African continent.
• Service providers and product developers can access the data via an API, allowing them to integrate it into their work.

Digital Earth Africa has announced the unveiling of its groundbreaking Waterbodies Monitoring Service, a global first specifically developed in and for the African continent. This innovative service aims to revolutionise the monitoring and management of water resources across Africa, providing critical data to support sustainable development and environmental stewardship.

Accessible and Timely Data for Decision-Makers

Digital Earth Africa’s Waterbodies Monitoring Service is unique among satellite-based global surface water datasets due to its accessibility, operational nature, and focus on delivering timely, relevant, and interpretable information to decision-makers. This service ensures that crucial data is readily available to support informed decision-making for sustainable water resource management across the continent. In addition, the monitoring services redefined the use of satellite Earth observation data, offering innovative packaging, easy access, and advanced analysis for assessing and monitoring surface water across the entire African continent.

Furthermore, the new Waterbodies Monitoring Service identifies over 700,000 unique water bodies across the African continent and utilises over 40 years of satellite observations. The Waterbodies Monitoring Service, which provides a comprehensive overview of persistent and seasonal water bodies, including lakes, ponds, man-made reservoirs, wetlands, and river segments are updated weekly. This allows for precise tracking of water resources and enhances the ability to manage and respond to environmental changes. By offering detailed insights into the dynamics of Africa’s water bodies, the service supports informed decision-making for sustainable water management and environmental conservation efforts across the continent.

Dr Lisa-Maria Rebelo, the Lead Scientist at Digital Earth Africa, has highlighted the extensive efforts of the Digital Earth Africa science team in developing the new Waterbodies Monitoring Service. The team meticulously evaluated the optimal design for waterbody datasets to address user-defined needs and deliver maximum impact. This involved identifying gaps in existing datasets and ensuring increased interoperability for users.

The result is a robust service co-designed with Digital Earth Africa users, providing highly detailed and extensive information on the continent’s current and retrospective water bodies. This innovative service is set to offer unparalleled insights, supporting effective water resource management and environmental conservation across Africa.

Several key functionalities set the Digital Earth Africa Waterbodies Monitoring Service apart from other global datasets. This service provides comprehensive waterbody statistics for every country on the African continent and updates them weekly with the latest satellite measurements. While other datasets have offered valuable insights into the presence or absence of surface water, the Digital Earth Africa Waterbodies Monitoring Service goes further. It provides the actual surface extent and the wet surface area as a time series for each individual waterbody. This detailed, time-sensitive data enhances the ability to monitor and manage water resources effectively, offering unprecedented support for decision-makers across Africa.

For example, a user could request data on all waterbodies in a particular area and the wet surface area time series for each. This enables the creation of powerful and highly customised summaries, allowing for the close monitoring of individual waterbodies or for understanding trends and the latest status of a collection of waterbodies. This capability provides invaluable insights for effective water resource management and decision-making.

Furthermore, Dr Rebelo stated that while the Digital Earth Africa Waterbodies Monitoring Service is groundbreaking regarding accessibility, interoperability, and transparency, its full potential lies in its practical applications. These include providing a detailed understanding of surface water availability, assessing dry season access to water, monitoring changes in water body sizes over time, and understanding potential flood risks. This information is crucial for effective water resource management and disaster preparedness across Africa.

Over the next few months, the Digital Earth Africa team will seek feedback from users engaged in real-world applications of the Waterbodies Monitoring Service. Dr. Lisa-Maria Rebelo explains, “We developed the service to help Africa’s governments, policymakers, and key private sector players plan effectively, adopt critical risk mitigation strategies, and proactively manage Africa’s settlements, cities, communities, and livelihoods that depend on or are near water bodies.”

This collaborative approach aims to refine the service based on practical use and ensure it meets the needs of its diverse user base.

Digital Earth Africa operates the world’s largest Open Data Cube (ODC) infrastructure. This free platform hosts and provides access to satellite imagery specific to the African continent. By packaging Earth observation data into accessible and free data sets, African governments, industry players, and decision-makers can track changes across the continent in unprecedented detail.