In January and February, 2008, heavy and long lasting rain fall led to partially serious flooding in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola. Many rivers and wadis were deeply inundated with water, which has caused serious damages to infrastructure and housing, and forced thousands of people to leave their homes. The contamination of the water caused by the submerging of pit latrines and the sewerage system led to an outbreak of cholera which caused the Namibian government to declare a state of emergency. Continuing rain fall is expected for the next days.

On March 14, 2008, UN-OOSA triggered the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters' on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme (UN-DP). Relying on data of DLR's high-resolution radar satellite TerraSAR-X, the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) at DLR produces maps of the affected region as support to the ongoing Charter Call which is managed by ESA with UNOSAT as Value Adding provider.

		ZKI satellite image maps: Floods in Namibia March 19, 2008 - 17:45 UTC The maps of ZKI show the region of Omusati at a scale of 1:50,000 and 1:100,000. The TerraSAR-X images used in the maps have a resolution of 16m (ScanSAR Mode).  More ...