Windhoek, Namibia

Quantitative climate
intelligence from the ground up.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

— George Box

I build statistical pipelines that turn climate hazard data into infrastructure investment risk, built specifically for African markets where existing models quietly fail. My tools are open, my methods are auditable, and the problem I am solving is real.

Wilka Igulu — quantitative climate analyst, Windhoek Namibia

I am a quantitative analyst from Windhoek, Namibia, working at the edge of climate science and infrastructure finance. I hold a BSc in Applied Mathematics and Statistics and a BSc Honours in Applied Statistics, both from NUST.

My Honours thesis modelled extreme wind speed events across Namibia using statistical methods that most climate risk practitioners in Africa have never applied to local data, and that gap is exactly what I am spending my career closing.

One published piece of work at a time.

80%
Honours thesis score, EVT applied to Namibian wind speed data
64%
Of Namibia lies >100 km from a long-record station, mapped in my shadow map below
3 / 10
Namibian stations in the global archive with usable records to the present, audit finding
825k
km² covered by ~20 long-record stations, the gap this work addresses
Data infrastructure · NOAA ISD · GitHub Actions Live — updates monthly

Namibia Station Monitor

A living data-quality audit of every Namibian weather station in the NOAA global archive. Recomputes a Data Quality Score (DQS v1.0) for all 56 stations on the 1st of each month via automated pipeline. Confirms Lüderitz present in ISD metadata since 1949, returns HTTP 404 in GHCND. Citable dataset: Igulu (2026), DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21229782.

Python NOAA ISD GitHub Actions DQS v1.0 Zenodo Open data
Data investigation · June 2026 Complete

The Namibian station audit: what the global climate archive actually contains

I pulled and quality-scored every Namibian record in NOAA's global daily archive. Three of ten stations reach the present day. Ondangwa is missing the 1990s. Lüderitz is not in the archive at all. The audit behind the shadow map and the article below.

NOAA GHCND Data quality ArcGIS Namibia
Peer-reviewed research · NUST Honours → Wind (MDPI), 2026 Accepted

Modelling Wind Speed Extremes Using Extreme Value Theory: A Case Study for Namibia

Applied Peaks-Over-Threshold and Generalized Pareto Distribution methods to model extreme wind speed events across Namibian meteorological stations. Produced return-level estimates with uncertainty bounds directly applicable to renewable energy infrastructure siting and insurance pricing. Accepted for publication in Wind (MDPI).

EVT / GPD R Wind energy Namibia
Research project · In progress

Namibian Climate Risk Sandbox

An open, reproducible pipeline from raw NOAA station records and CMIP6 projections to boardroom-ready physical risk assessments for a real Windhoek asset, the Goreangab Water Reclamation Plant. Station audit and CMIP6 bias-correction phases complete; extreme value and financial layers in build on a published schedule.

Python NOAA GHCND CMIP6 EVT PyMC Open source
Research program · v0.2 Active development

SACRF - Sparse-Adaptive Climate Risk Framework

Built on peer-reviewed extreme value research (Wind/MDPI, 2026). A Bayesian engine for honest climate-risk estimation in data-scarce African markets, where prior precision adapts to station-level data quality so that short records and long records are treated with appropriate uncertainty. Financial translation layer and pre-registered calibration experiment in design.

Bayesian EVT GPD / POT Uncertainty quantification Climate finance
Professional · Development Workshop Namibia Live

Automated data pipelines for urban development research

Engineered end-to-end data pipelines connecting KoboToolbox field collection to Power BI reporting via Power Query API, eliminating manual handling across multi-site development programmes. Built spatial maps in QGIS and interactive dashboards for programme impact monitoring.

Power BI KoboToolbox ArcGIS ETL XLSForm
Map of Namibia showing dark shadow zones more than 100 km from the nearest long-record weather station, with 100 km coverage circles around each station and DFI infrastructure sites marked.
Namibia Weather Station Shadow Map: zones more than 100 km from the nearest WMO long-record station (dark wash) cover roughly 64% of the country. Coverage circles show each station's 100 km observation footprint; DFI infrastructure sites marked by category. Built in ArcGIS. Sources: WMO OSCAR/Surface, Natural Earth, NASA SRTM, Strohbach (2014).  Read the article →
Live dashboard · Updated 1st of each month Live

Namibia Station Monitor - live DQS feed

56 Namibian weather stations scored monthly by Data Quality Score. Filter by usability tier or GHCND status. Lüderitz confirmed absent from the global daily archive despite ISD registration since 1949.

DQS v1.0 56 stations Live data

Statistical & mathematical

Extreme Value Theory
Applied Statistics
R (statistical computing)
Python (scientific stack)
Bayesian methods / PyMC
SQL

Data & engineering

Power BI / DAX
ETL pipeline design
QGIS / ArcGIS Pro / spatial analysis
KoboToolbox / XLSForm
Tableau Public

Climate & finance

NOAA ISD / climate data
CMIP6 + bias correction (QDM)
Climate risk disclosure (IFRS S2 / TCFD)
DCF & scenario-adjusted NPV
Project finance fundamentals

Currently learning

MCMC diagnostics at production grade
Real options analysis
NGFS transition scenarios
Parametric insurance trigger design
physrisk-lib / OS-Climate
June 2026

Why Namibia's weather stations are a development finance problem

Twenty long-record stations, 825,000 km², a shadow map covering 64% of the country. What that means for infrastructure lending in southern Africa.

I am always happy to talk about climate risk in Africa, what I am building, where I am trying to go, or anything in between. If you have a project or role that matches the work above, reach out directly.