Research Initiative · Little Engineers · Ghana
Working title — the team names it together
Climate-Resilient Infrastructure · Ghana
A multidisciplinary research initiative exploring how Ghana's built environment can be monitored, modelled, and made resilient — combining UAV surveys, GIS spatial analysis, digital twin modelling, materials science, and climate data.
The Problem
Ghana is urbanising rapidly. Buildings are going up at pace — but the systems to monitor whether those buildings are appropriate, safe, or climate-ready are not keeping up.
When you combine rapid construction with flood-prone geography, inconsistent building material standards, and increasing climate variability, you get a structural vulnerability problem at national scale.
Project ClimaBuilt asks the question that nobody has yet answered at scale: how do we know which buildings will hold, and which will fail, when the climate stress comes?
Using UAV surveys, GIS spatial analysis, digital twin modelling, and materials science to build a scalable monitoring and prediction system for Ghana's rapidly urbanising built environment — one that can generate actionable outputs for policy, planning, and construction practice.
Methodology
* Methodology is in development — subject to refinement as the team formalises
The Team
Geographer and Cloud Developer with expertise in GIS analysis, spatial data pipelines, and UAV systems. Leading the spatial and infrastructure layer of Project ClimaBuilt, and providing the cloud and data architecture that makes the research scalable.
Materials Engineer specialising in construction materials suited to Ghana's specific climate conditions. Leads the materials science dimension — assessing which building materials are appropriate, and modelling how structures will perform under climate stress.
Climate Scientist with expertise in weather patterns, climate systems, and GIS. In discussions to join the research team — bringing essential climate data integration capability and ensuring the research is grounded in rigorous environmental science.
Why This Research Matters
This is not a theoretical research question. The consequences of getting this wrong — buildings failing during floods, communities losing homes, infrastructure collapsing — are already happening in Ghana.
Project ClimaBuilt sits at a convergence of urgent local need, available technology, and an underserved research gap that North American and European institutions are actively seeking partners to address.
The team — a geographer, a materials engineer, and a climate scientist, all based in Ghana — is uniquely positioned to do this work from the ground, not from a distance.
Partnership
We are looking for research partners, collaborators, mentors, and institutional connections who want to be part of something that matters.
What you bring:
What you get:
Whether you are a researcher, institution, GIS professional, or organisation — we want to hear from you. No commitment required at this stage.