Mapping the Risk of Flooding

Riesgo is an interactive map which visualizes the flood hazards of Marikina City in the Philippines. Marikina City lies on the Marikina River in a valley between the Sierra Madre mountains and the Quezon City hills. The city therefore lives with an almost constant threat of flooding.

The Riesgo interactive map was created as a way to showcase some of the research undertaken to examine suitable areas for flood evacuation centers in Marikina City. That research project explored elevation data, existing hazard maps and existing evacuation centers. The new map uses that data alongside data on population density, the location of critical buildings and road data to identify flood hazards in the city and to identify areas which are most suitable for the placement of new evacuation centers.

All the data used to assess flood risk and to assess the most suitable locations for evacuation centers could have been overwhelming for the map users. However Riesgo uses the story map format to lead the user through this data step by step. The result is a very effective visualization and explanation of the flood risks in Marikina City and how the city could address those risks. In fact Riesgo is so effective that it not only won the Grand Prize in Mapbox's VizRisk 2019 Challenge but also won the Best Interaction Design category as well.

You can learn more about how the map was made with Mapbox GL and ReactJS in Flooding in Marikina City: A Case Study. This blog post also includes a link to explore the map's code on GitHub.