Case Study · Case Study
GeoClimate Kenya
A web-based geospatial decision support system that monitors and predicts climate-change impacts on Kenya’s water resources and biodiversity — combining GIS, remote sensing, spatial databases, and predictive environmental models in one interactive application.
- Context
- Academic / Research Platform
- Role
- Geospatial Full-Stack Developer
- Timeline
- Completed
- Domain
- Water resources · Biodiversity · Climate
Stack
- Node.js
- Express
- PostgreSQL
- PostGIS
- GeoServer (WMS)
- React
- OpenLayers
- Mapbox GL
- Deck.GL
- QGIS
- GDAL
The Problem
Climate change is stressing Kenya through declining surface water, more frequent droughts, habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, and species migration — yet most environmental datasets stay locked behind specialized GIS software and expert workflows.
Policymakers, researchers, conservationists, and the public needed accessible tools to explore historical trends, analyze environmental change, and support evidence-based planning without learning a full desktop GIS stack.
The Architecture Stack
Remote-sensing and environmental datasets are processed with QGIS and GDAL, stored in PostgreSQL/PostGIS, published as Web Map Services through GeoServer, and exposed via an Express REST API to a React front end with OpenLayers (plus Mapbox GL / Deck.GL where needed).
The product centers on two analysis modules — water resources and biodiversity — inside one interactive Web GIS with layer controls, legends, time filtering, and dynamic map rendering.
- Data sources include GSWE, GBIF, NASA Earth observation, World Bank climate data, Kenya Met rainfall, and WDPA
- Water module: occurrence, seasonality, recurrence, transitions, maximum extent, and hydrological model views
- Biodiversity module: species occurrence, habitat suitability, distribution mapping, and climate-driven migration analysis
- Interactive GIS: layer switching, symbology, opacity, base maps, legends, and time filters
Technical Highlights & Challenges
Building a usable decision-support map meant integrating heterogeneous GIS datasets, optimizing PostGIS spatial indexes, configuring GeoServer WMS layers, managing coordinate systems, and tuning performance for large rasters in the browser.
The work demonstrated end-to-end Web GIS craft: spatial storage and querying, service publishing, REST APIs, and React-based map UX.
- PostGIS spatial indexing and query design for production-speed map queries
- GeoServer WMS for publishing processed environmental layers
- OpenLayers + React for responsive interactive mapping
- Hydrological analysis and species distribution modeling (MaxEnt) feeding the web UI
The Concrete Outcome
Delivered a full-stack Web GIS decision-support platform for climate adaptation — interactive climate visualization, water-resource monitoring, biodiversity analysis, and spatial exploration tools that make complex environmental data usable beyond specialist GIS software.