Department of Biosystems and Environmental Engineering

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://koha2.tukenya.ac.ke/handle/123456789/1429

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    Institutional challenges in scaling-up climate change adaptation actions: experiences from rural communities in Senegal and Kenya
    (2017-09-27) Olang, Luke O.; Ouma, Gilbert O.; Dieye, Amadou M.; Ogallo, Laban O.
    Regional institutions in Africa have the potential to reinforce the adaptive capacity of rural communities in handling climate change impacts. The institutional arrangements provide the rationale for scaling-up adaptation actions by setting the roles of individual players involved in the planning process at local, national and regional levels. The scaling-up then seeks to extend and disseminate the lessons learnt across the levels to support refinement and inclusive implementation of long-term climate change adaptation strategies. This article discusses these considerations through studies of two rural communities faced with the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies in Senegal and Kenya. The cases illustrate different approaches of institutional arrangements and scaling-up of adaptation actions from community to national levels. The lessons from the communities are typical of most vulnerable rural regions and were hence important for extended dissemination considering that the impacts of climate change in Africa are felt largely at community levels. A reduction of this vulnerability requires efficient and realistic adaptation strategies that seek to understand the rural communities while developing considerate policy-based alternatives at all levels of administration.
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    Spatial Modelling of Solar Energy Potential in Kenya
    (2017-09-27) Oloo Francis; Olang, Luke; Strobl, Josef
    Solar energy is one of the readily available renewable energy resources in the developing countries within the tropical region. Kenya is one of the countries which receive an average of approximately 6.5 sunshine hours in a single day throughout the year. However, there is slow adoption of solar energy resources in the country due to limited information on the spatial variability solar energy potential. This study aims at assessing the potential of photovoltaic solar energy in Kenya. The factors that influence incident solar radiation which were considered in this task included atmospheric transmissivity and topography. The influence of atmospheric transmissivity was factored in by modeling monthly transmissivity factors from a combination of cloud cover, diffuse ratios and the effect of altitude. The contribution of topography was included by applying hemispherical view shed analysis to determine the amount of incident global radiation on the surface based on the orientation of the terrain. GIS concepts were used to integrate the spatial datasets from different themes. The results showed that, about 70% of the land area in Kenya has the potential of receiving approximately 5 kWh/m2/day throughout the year. In outline, this work successfully assessed the spatio-temporal variability in the characteristics of solar energy potential in Kenya and can be used as a basis for policy support in the country.