A GIS-Based Evacuation Route Planning in Flood-Susceptible Area of Siraha Municipality, Nepal

Abstract

Flood is one of the most frequently occurring and devastating disasters in Nepal. Several locations in Nepal are at high risk of flood, which requires proper guidance on early warning and safe evacuation of people to emergency locations through optimal routes to minimize fatalities. However, the information is limited to flood hazard mapping only. This study provides a comprehensive flood susceptibility and evacuation route mapping in the Siraha Municipality of Nepal where a lot of flood events have occurred in the past and are liable to happen in the future. The flood susceptibility map was created using a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) over nine flood conditioning factors. It showed that 47% of the total area was highly susceptible to flood, and the remaining was in the safe zone. The assembly points where people would gather for evacuation were selected within the susceptible zone through manual digitization while the emergency shelters were selected within a safe zone such that they can host the maximum number of people. The network analysis approach is used for evacuation route mapping in which the closest facility analysis proposed the optimum evacuation route based on the walking speed of evacuees to reach the emergency shelter place considering the effect of slope and flood on the speed of the pedestrian. A total of 12 out of 22 suggested emergency shelters were within 30 min, 7 within 60 min, and 2 within 100 min walk from the assembly point. Moreover, this study suggests the possible areas for further shelter place allocations based on service area analysis. This study can support the authorities’ decision-making for the flood risk assessment and early warning system planning, and helps in providing an efficient evacuation plan for risk mitigation.