Waterways of Kenya from OpenStreetMap for Environmental Modeling

OpenStreetMap water features across Kenya, including rivers, streams, canals, lakes, and ponds. The dataset is derived from a free, collaborative world map and is provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). Coverage reflects volunteer mapper activity, with urban areas likely better represented than remote regions.

Use Cases

• Model flood risk based on mapped waterway and water body locations.
• Conduct watershed analysis using the network of rivers and streams.
• Create environmental basemaps for Kenya using the water feature context.
• Assess the completeness of water feature mapping in urban versus remote areas.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from OpenStreetMap, a widely used, free, and collaborative global mapping project.
• Includes multiple geospatial file formats (GEOPACKAGE, SHP, KML, GEOJSON) for flexibility.
• License is ODbL-1.0, which permits sharing, creating, and adapting the data.

Limitations

• Coverage is dependent on volunteer mapper activity, which may lead to sparse data in remote areas.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer geographic information (VGI) collected via collaborative mapping.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-19 11:05:02.192025; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Kenya