Geospatial Mapping and Assessment of Weather Stations for Enhanced Weather Event Reporting in Zambia

Abstract

The limited spatial distribution of weather stations in Zambia continues to hinder timely and accurate weather reporting, particularly in remote and rural regions. This inadequacy affects sectors such as agriculture, disaster risk management, and climate adaptation planning. This paper proposes a geospatial assessment framework that leverages buffer analysis to identify spatial gaps in Zambia’s weather monitoring infrastructure. Each weather station was assigned a 100 km coverage radius, and a subtraction algorithm was applied against the national boundary to expose uncovered regions. These gaps were visualized in a Flutter-based mobile application that integrates real-time station metadata and interactive mapping. Results reveal significant regional disparities, particularly in North-Western and Western provinces. This system supports data-driven decisions on new station deployments and contributes to early warning systems, sustainable development, and digital meteorological services. The work builds upon previous digital spatial mapping systems such as those used for locust detection [1], integrating them with meteorological use cases to enhance Zambia’s climate resilience.