The Flood Observatory maintains a Global Active Archive of large flood events, 1985 to present. It is available to the public in both spreadsheet and GIS formats (both formats together provide the complete Archive). New events are entered into this archive each week. As of the end of 2016, there were 4432 events; each has a unique archive number.
This Flood List link provides a summary. According to Flood List (April 7, 2017): "The government in Malawi has said that 4 people died following floods in areas of Chief Kyungu, Wasambo, Kilupula and Mwirang’ombe in Karonga district.The flooding occurred 04 April 2017. As of 06 April a further 3 people were still missing and 6 reported injured. Officials say that 5,520 households were affected and about 1075 hectares of crops fields, including rice, maize and cassava, were damaged.Vice President Dr. Saulos Chilima visited the area and assured the victims that government will do everything to support them.“We will make sure that the necessary relief items are provided. In addition, we will tighten security in the camps and provide all facilities necessary for human living including sanitation,” Chilima said. A bridge at Jalawe (near Chiweta) was washed away in the floods, causing major traffic disruption to and from Karonga and hindering delivery of relief supplies to those affected. Engineers are on the ground working to construct a new bridge.Similar floods occurred in Northern Region, including Karonga, in April 2016. At least 12 people died and 9,000 were displaced.".
NASA Landsat 8 and ESA Sentinel SAR data if used in this map were obtained from the the U.S. Geological Survey Hazards Data Distribution System. and the Sentinels Science Data hub, respectively. Landsat 8 is jointly managed by NASA and the United States Geological Survey. Flood modeling results if used are from the NASA/University of Maryland Global Flood Monitoring System (GFMS), Drs. Robert Adler and Huan Wu, University of Maryland/ESSIC.
GIS Data Sources:
GIS files supporting this Flood Event Map are located here.
Click here for access to the automated daily MODIS-derived .shp file GIS record (record commences in 2011). Choose appropriate 10 deg x 10 deg map sheet directory and appropriate dates; longitude and latitudes refer to upper left map sheet corner.
The Global Surface Water Explorer provides part of the (dark blue) annual surface water extent layer. It is based on Landsat data at a spatial resolution of 30 m (Jean-Francois Pekel, Andrew Cottam, Noel Gorelick, Alan S. Belward, High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes. Nature 540, 418-422, 2016). On the map, it is shown together with the NASA Shuttle Water Boundary Data (SWBD) surface water extent (90 m resolution) processed from the 11-day February, 2000, SRTM mission and corrected using Landsat data. Large flood events are not normally depicted in either data set. Thus, red areas on our maps show flood extent beyond these more typical water extents
When used, NASA NRT Global Flood Mapping maximum water extent for the years 2013-2015, at 250 m spatial resolution, provide part of the (dark blue) maximum flood mapped. DFO creates these annual water extent layers from data provided by that project, by accumulating into one annual file all of the daily .shp files for each year. DFO has also produced flood extent files through mapping of individual floods (~ yr 2000 to present); these are also included where available in this maximum flood extent layer.
(counting since April 10, 2017)