An Interactive Web-Based Geovisual Analytics Tool to Explore Water Scarcity in Niger River Basin

Abstract

Assessing the needs for adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate change and variability in Niger River Basin is a key for future development in Western Africa. There are two major challenges in terms of the assessment: the first is that future projections in water availability based on the historical trends are hard to assess under uncertainty, and the second is that human activities and population growth play a decisive but very uncertain role in environmental impacts. In order to address both challenges, we have developed a geovisual analytics tool for exploring simulation results under combinations of climate models, climate policies, and future population growth. Moreover, our tool is capable of ensemble-visualization and allows users to explore agreement levels among different climate models to assess future uncertainty.