Actionable information on African water resources is now accessible on a new platform launched by Digital Earth Africa, the world’s largest operator of the Open Data Cube (ODC) infrastructure and a provider of satellite imagery data specific to the continent.

The Waterbodies Monitoring Service identifies and tracks more than 700,000 unique water bodies across Africa, incorporating over 40 years of satellite observations. The database is updated on a weekly basis and maps trends in the surface area of persistent and seasonal waterbodies, including lakes, ponds, reservoirs, wetlands and riverine systems. The service is accessible via the organization’s interactive maps system and the sandbox analytical environment.

Source: Digital Earth Africa

The service can expand detailed understanding of surface water availability, dry season access to water, changes in water body sizes over time and analysis of potential flood risks. Users can request data on all waterbodies in a particular area and the wet surface area time series for each of those waterbodies. Highly customized summaries can be created to enable close monitoring of an individual waterbody, or to understand trends and the latest status of a collection of waterbodies.