How FloodCheckGH works

FloodCheckGH helps you understand how flood-prone a location in Ghana is before you rent or buy a home, shop, or plot of land. Search a place, use your GPS, or tap the map — you get a risk rating, the recorded flooding history nearby, the physical factors driving the risk, and plain guidance.

How the rating is calculated

The 0–100 score is the stronger of two independent layers, then mapped to Minimal → Low → Moderate → High → Severe:

Documented history — has this exact area flooded before? We check curated records of real Ghana floods (see sources) and how severe/frequent they were.
Live terrain & water — even with no recorded flood, is the spot physically exposed? We check the elevation and local relief (is it the low ground water drains toward, and is it flat?) and the distance to the nearest river, lagoon, drain or coastline.

Taking the stronger of the two means a place with a real flood disaster stays rated high, and a low-lying riverside plot with no recorded event is still flagged as risky. A location that sits inside a Ramsar wetland — ground that floods seasonally by nature — is never rated below High.

Each report also answers the plain question “Does this location tend to flood?”, and adds live context that isn’t part of the score: a 7-day rain outlook (with heavy / very-heavy / excessive-rainfall days flagged), a river flood watch, a sea-level-rise & storm-surge note near the coast, and the peak-risk flood months for that spot.

Where the data comes from

Flood history (1935–today): NADMO reports, news archives, academic studies, and UN OCHA / ReliefWeb disaster records — including the Gold-Coast-era Accra floods, the June 3 2015 disaster, the 2023 Akosombo Dam spillage, and the 2025–2026 Accra floods.
Elevation: the Copernicus GLO-90 digital elevation model (via Open-Meteo).
Weather & rainfall forecast: Open-Meteo — current conditions plus a 7-day rain outlook, used to flag heavy, very-heavy and excessive-rainfall days for the location.
River flood watch: the Open-Meteo Flood API (GloFAS) — current and forecast discharge for the nearest major river. Shown for context; not part of the score.
Rivers, lagoons & drains: OpenStreetMap.
Satellite surface water: the JRC Global Surface Water dataset (1984–2021, optional map overlay) — where standing water has actually been observed from space.
Wetlands: Ghana’s six Ramsar-listed wetlands.
Maps: OpenStreetMap, OpenTopoMap, and Esri satellite imagery.

All 16 regions are covered. New authoritative disaster records are ingested from ReliefWeb, EM-DAT, DesInventar/NADMO and the Dartmouth Flood Observatory.

Spotted flooding we’ve missed?

Every record here is documented and cited — we never invent flooding. If you know an area floods and it isn’t shown, use the “Report flooding here” button on any location: it opens your email app with the coordinates filled in so you can tell us. Verified reports are added with a source.

Documented vs. representative

Each event is labelled so you know what's verified:

documented a specific recorded flood — many carry a source link (Wikipedia, ReliefWeb, UNICEF, news, academic).
≈ representative illustrative of recurring seasonal flooding in that area, not one specific verified incident.

Flood season

Southern Ghana has two rainy seasons, so it floods worst in June and October. Northern Ghana has one, peaking August–September (often worsened by upstream dam spillage). Each report shows the peak-risk months for that location.

Limits — please read

Flood footprints are approximate, and the history is a curated snapshot — comprehensive for known hotspots, but it won't list every street or every past flood.
Radar-based satellite methods (and the app in general) are strongest for river and dam-spillage floods; fast urban flash floods can be under-represented.
This is informational only — not a substitute for a professional site survey, valuation, or insurance assessment.