Correlation between flooding and settlement planning in Nairobi

Abstract

Globally, climate change triggers flooding through unpredictable, intermittent and incessant precipitation. Flooding in Nairobi is multi-factorial in causation. This has raised the question of necessary interventions in the design of urban settlements in order to reduce the impacts of extreme rainfall events that result in floods. This paper seeks to analyse the reciprocal correlation between settlement planning and pluvial flooding in Nairobi. Censuses data were obtained from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) and daily rainfall records from the Kenya Meteorological Department spanning from 1961 to 2018. Other key parameters were drawn from extensive thematic content analyses of the existing literature. The data were subjected to trend and correlation analyses using the Stata and SPSS software to determine patterns and possible causal relationships. The results showed that there was an insignificant but positive relationship between the two variables with Pearson and Spearman coefficients of correlation of 0.211 and 0.111, respectively. The results of this study repudiate the perceived notion that occurrences of pluvial flooding in Nairobi have increased due to erratic precipitation patterns and improper planning of settlements. The null hypothesis is therefore upheld at 95% confidence level.