Browsing by Author "Pakati, Sibuyisele S."

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    Earth observation-based analysis of flood extent and impacts on land use and cover in the Cape Town Metropolitan Region, South Africa
    (Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Pakati, Sibuyisele S.; Dube, Timothy; Shoko, Cletah
    This work leverages multi-source data spatial approach in mapping floods extents and their effect on key land use land cover in the Cape Town Metropolitan Region, for the 2023 period. Using the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform, the study mapped flood extent through Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), and Sentinel 2- Multispectral Instrument (MSI) for landcover classification before and after a flood event. Landcover classification for the period before and after the flood occurrence were performed using the Random Forest (RF) algorithm. To assess the flood-affected categories, the pre-flood image was overlaid on the flood extent spatial layer. The research findings showed that the central and low-lying areas of the Metropolitan area were significantly affected by the floods. A total land area of about 2074 ha(ha) (84.30 %) was affected. Further results showed that floods mostly affected bare areas (32.64 % equivalent to 803.05 ha) and built-up (46.84 % equivalent to 1152.33 ha) areas. The affected built-up areas were mainly located in low-lying regions, near floodplains, and near water bodies. Overall, the findings of the study underscore the importance of spatially explicit techniques in flood mapping and informing early warning systems for disaster preparedness.