Title
Geoinformation applications in Drought risk and vulnerability assessment in Baringo
County, Kenya
Author(s)
Contacts
Affiliation
Abstract
Kipterer John Kapoi
P.O Box 632,00618; karantili@gmail.com,kkapoi@yahoo.com
Regional Centre for mapping of resources for development (RCMRD); Kenya
This study is being undertaken in arid and semi arid county of Baringo which is prone to
perennial droughts, with the majority of its population living in the northern and eastern
parts impoverished by the recurrent droughts with poverty levels being high weakening
their resilience. The main objectives of this research is to assess population
vulnerability and drought risk and rainfall performance in during the drought study
period in Baringo county, Kenya. The drought assessment was based on known drought
periods, of 2009 and 2011 where a meteorological validation using NOAA-AVHHR data
was used to determine the rainfall variation over the long term average.
The data were obtained from NOAA-AVHRR, was processed with GIS software of the
Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). The population vulnerability was
processed using poverty rates, livelihoods and conflicts data in a weighted criteria with
poverty taking the highest weight followed by livelihood and lastly conflicts. The drought
hazard for the study periods were determined using a combination of indicators such as
a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the normalized difference water
index (NDWI) which forms a strong drought index; Normalized difference drought Index
(NDDI). The drought severity levels were classified into five main classes with the fourth
and fifth classes being high and very high drought severity.
Key Words
The preliminary results reveal that 54.2% of the inhabitants of the northeastern parts of
the county are highly vulnerable to drought and about 30.5% affected by resource
conflicts with poverty levels ranging between 50 to 73% majority being in pastoral agropastoral and marginal farming.
Vulnerability, Drought,Livelihoods, Population, risk