Komlavi Akpoti

International Water Management Institute | IWMI · Water Data Science & Digital Innovations

VegDischarge v1, which covers over 64,000 river segments in Africa, is a natural river discharge dataset produced by coupled modeling; the agro-hydrologic VegET model and the mizuRoute routing model for the period 2001-2021. Using remote sensing data and hydrological modeling system, the 1-km runoff field simulated by VegET, was routed with mizuRou...

Agriculture consumes the largest share of freshwater globally; therefore, distinguishing between rainfed and irrigated croplands is essential for agricultural water management and food security. In this study, a framework incorporating the Budyko model was used to differentiate between rainfed and irrigated cropland areas in Africa for eight remote...

Although Ghana is a leading global cocoa producer, its production and yield have experienced declines in recent years due to various factors, including long-term climate change such as increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, as well as drought events. With the increasing exposure of cocoa-producing regions to extreme weather events,...

Study Region: Continental Africa Study Focus: This study evaluates the accuracy of eight gauge-corrected rainfall products across Africa through direct comparisons with in situ observations for the period 2001-2020. The effect of validation datasets on the performance of the rainfall products was also quantified in ten African countries. Four categ...

This study evaluates flood susceptibility and risk on Bulk Supply Points in the Greater Accra region (GAR) using a Frequency Ratio model based on 15 flood conditioning factors. The model explores the influence of natural, meteorological and anthropogenic factors on flooding occurrences under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios and asse...

Climate change leading to Climate extremes in the twenty-first century is more evident in megacities across the world, especially in West Africa. The Greater Accra region is one of the most populated regions in West Africa. As a result, the region has become more susceptible to climate extremes such as floods, heatwaves, and droughts. The study emp...

Flooding, exacerbated by the challenges of climate change, poses a growing threat to communities in the Upper West Region (UWR) of Ghana. This persistent issue, particularly during the rainy seasons has subjected the region to several losses of properties and lives over the years. This has spurred the need for a comprehensive delineation of flood r...

Climate change effects are expected to be profoundly local and region-specific, underlining the urgent need for local-level assessments. This study emphasizes the agriculturally important Zanzan region of northeastern Côte d’Ivoire and examines future changes in precipitation, temperature, and resultant drought conditions based on six global climat...

This study investigates the impact of climate change and variability on reservoir inflow and hydropower generation at three key hydropower plants in Côte d'Ivoire including Buyo, Kossou, and Taboo. To simulate inflow to reservoir and energy generation, the Random Forest (RF), a machine-learning algorithm allowing fewer input variables was applied....

This study compares the performance of satellite precipitation products (SPPs) and soil moisture-based rainfall products (SM2RPPs) in capturing rainfall patterns in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The findings indicate that SPPs outperform SM2RPPs at daily to annual timescales. The decomposition of total bias reveals that hit bias are dominant, but are...

This study aimed to compare the performance of six regional climate models (RCMs) in simulating observed and projecting future climate in the Savannah zone of Ghana, in order to find suitable methods to improve the accuracy of climate models in the region. The study found that the accuracy of both individual RCMs and their ensemble mean improved wi...

The effects of climate change (CC) have intensified in Ghana, especially in the Greater Accra region over the last two decades. CC assessment under the new IPCC scenarios and consistent local station data is limited. Consequently, CC assessment is becoming difficult in data-scarce regions in Ghana. This study utilizes six different Regional Climate...

The failure of sewage and drainage systems in SubSaharan African cities is frequent and can be considered as a critical issue, both from an environmental standpoint and in terms of associated maintenance costs. This study analyzes the state of the sanitation systems, the elements behind the failures, the environmental concepts used to classify the...

In Cote d'Ivoire, the failure of urban sewage systems is a crucial problem for the drainage of wastewater and rainwater. This failure is due to many factors and therefore, calls for diagnostic studies. The present study aimed at analyzing these networks in order to identify the different factors that contribute to the operational and structural deg...

The uncertainties and biases associated with Global Climate Models (GCMs) ascend from global to regional and local scales which delimits the applicability and suitability of GCMs in site-specific impact assessment research. The study downscaled two GCMs to evaluate effects of climate change (CC) in the Black Volta Basin (BVB) using Statistical Down...

This chapter provides a survey of pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES) in terms of the factors considered in the site selection process: geographic, social, economic, and environmental. Due to the number and complexity of factors considered for this purpose, a multicriteria decision-making model is often used during the selection process. Fro...

Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) has for years been touted as a suitable alternative for balancing the mismatch between demand and supply of electricity. As the world transits from a fossil fuel-based electricity sector to a renewable energy-based one, PHES is also continuously being used to resolve challenges regarding variable or intermittent s...

Groundwater (GW) is a key source of drinking water and irrigation to combat growing food insecurity and for improved water access in rural sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are limited studies due to data scarcity in the region. New modeling techniques such as Machine learning (ML) are found robust and promising tools to assess GW recharge with le...

Climate change (CC) poses a threat to renewable hydropower, which continues to play a significant role in energy generation in West Africa (WA). Thus, the assessment of the impacts of climate change and climate variability on hydropower generation is critical for dam management. This study develops a framework based on ensemble climate models and e...

Irrigation is important for food security, however, water requirements for sustainable irrigation may be affected by climate change. The study analysed water requirements of two commonly cultivated crops in the dry season in the Ghanaian Savannah regions under baseline and future periods. Crop water requirement (CWR) and crop irrigation requirement...

Study region White Volta River Basin, Ghana. Study focus Groundwater sustainability is becoming a major concern in the face of population growth, land use land cover (LULC), and climate changes. The Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model is used in this study to analyse the current and future groundwater demands for the period of 2015–2070. Tw...

The northeast region of Côte d’Ivoire, where agriculture is the main economic activity, is potentially vulnerable to extreme climatic conditions. This study aims to make a comprehensive spatio-temporal analysis of trends in extreme indices related to precipitation and temperature for the Zanzan region of Côte d’Ivoire over the period of 1981–2020....

CONTEXT: Although rice production has increased significantly in the last decade in West Africa, the region is far from being rice self-sufficient. Inland valleys (IVs) with their relatively higher water content and soil fertility compared to the surrounding uplands are the main rice-growing agroecosystem. They are being promoted by governments and...

CONTEXT Although rice production has increased significantly in the last decade in West Africa, the region is far from being rice self-sufficient. Inland valleys (IVs) with their relatively higher water content and soil fertility compared to the surrounding uplands are the main rice-growing agroecosystem. They are being promoted by governments and...

Rice is one of the major staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and is mainly grown in three environments: rainfed upland and rainfed and irrigated lowlands. In all rice-growing environments, the yield gap (the difference between the potential yield in irrigated lowland or water-limited yield in rainfed lowland and upland and the actual yield obt...

Rice is one of the major staple foods in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and is mainly grown in three environments: rainfed upland and rainfed and irrigated lowlands. In all rice-growing environments, the yield gap (the difference between the potential yield in irrigated lowland or water-limited yield in rainfed lowland and upland and the actual yield obt...

Groundwater is the main available freshwater resource and therefore its use, management and sustainability are closely related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, Land Use Land Cover (LULC) and climate change are among the factors impacting groundwater recharge. The use of land-use and climate data in conjunction with hydrological...

Climate change potential impacts are evaluated through the changes in the local and regional climate. However, Global and Regional Climate simulated outputs do not often capture these changes well, hampering their direct applicability. Impact studies using coarse resolution data require bias-correction of climate variables, a process that minimizes...

CONTEXT Although rice production has increased significantly in the last decade in West Africa, the region is far from being rice self-sufficient. Inland valleys (IVs) with their relatively higher water content and soil fertility compared to the surrounding uplands are the main rice-growing agroecosystem. They are being promoted by governments and...

Climate change (CC) is the new normal in the 21st century. Effects of CC have intensified in Ghana, especially in the Greater Accra region over the last two decades. CC assessment under the new IPCC scenarios and consistent local station data is limited. Consequently, CC assessment is becoming difficult in data-scarce regions in Ghana. This study u...

Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) is a powerful model for climate change assessment. However, its usage remains very grey with limited studies on climate change (CC) assessment in Ghana. This study explored the applicability and suitability of SDSM for CC assessment in the Black Volta section of Ghana. The hydro-climatic parameters of Hadley Cen...

Small-scale irrigation has gained momentum in recent years as one of the development priorities in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, farmer-led irrigation is often informal with little support from extension services and a paucity of data on land suitability for irrigation. To map the spatial explicit suitability for dry season small-scale irrigation, w...

Achieving rice self-sufficiency in West Africa will require an expansion of the irrigated rice area under water-scarce conditions. However, little is known about how much area can be irrigated and where and when water-saving practices could be used. The objective of this study was to assess potentially irrigable lands for irrigated rice cultivation...

Inland valleys (IVs) in Africa are important landscapes for rice cultivation and are targeted by national governments to attain self-sufficiency. Yet, there is limited information on the spatial distribution of IVs suitability at the national scale. In the present study, we developed an ensemble model approach to characterize the IVs suitability fo...

Agricultural land suitability analysis (ALSA) for crop production is one of the key tools for ensuring sustainable agriculture and for attaining the current global food security goal in line with the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) of United Nations. Although some review studies addressed land suitability, few of them specifically focused o...

In this study, impacts of rainfall and land use changes on soil erosion in Nasarawa State, Nigeria in changing climate, were investigated by applying remote sensing techniques, Geographical Information System (GIS) and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Results revealed that, changes in rainfall intensity and land cover types are the...

The Bui hydropower plant plays a vital role in the socioeconomic development of Ghana. This paper attempt to explore the combined effects of climate-land use land cover change on power production using the (WEAP) model: Water Evaluation and Planning system. The historical analysis of rainfall and stream flow variability showed that the annual coeff...

Land cover is the natural or basic elements of the environment that link and impacts many parts of the local, regional and global levels of the environment. The study was conducted in two capital districts of the Brong-Ahafo Region which lies within the green belt of Ghana in the moist semi-deciduous forest zone. This research was to assess the eff...

The effects of temperature and rainfall changes on hydropower generation in Ghana from 1960–2011 were examined to understand country-wide trends of climate variability. Moreover, the discharge and the water level trends for the Akosombo reservoir from 1965–2014 were examined using the Mann-Kendall test statistic to assess localised changes. The ann...

Potential implications of rainfall variability along with Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULC) on stream flow have been assessed in the Black Volta basin using the SWAT model. The spatio-temporal variability of rainfall over the Black Volta was assessed using the Mann-Kendall monotonic trend test and the Sen’s slope for the period 1976–2011. The s...

The concentration of some relevant water quality parameters were determined for the Awuo Kojo stream to assess the extent of impact that the municipal waste dumpsite within Sunyani municipality might have on the surface water quality for domestic consumption. The " Awuo Kojo " stream, is an important tributary of the Tano River within the Sunyani m...