Abstract
Flooding has been one of the recurring occurred natural disasters that induce detrimental impacts on humans, property and environment. Frequent floods is a severe issue and a complex natural phenomenon in Pakistan with respect to population affected, environmental degradations, and socio-economic and property damages. The Super Flood, which hit Sindh in 2010, has turned out to be a wakeup call and has underlined the overwhelming challenge of natural calamities, as 2010 flood and the preceding flood in 2011 caused a huge loss to life, property and land use. These floods resulted in disruption of power, telecommunication, and water utilities in many districts of Pakistan, including 22 districts of Sindh. These floods call for risk assessment and hazard mapping of Lower Indus Basin flowing in the Sindh Province as such areas were also inundated in 2010 flood, which were not flooded in the past in this manner. This primary focus of this paper is the use of Multi-criteria Evaluation (MCE) methods in integration with the Geographical Information System (GIS) for the analysis of areas prone to flood. This research demonstrated how GIS tools can be used to produce map of flood vulnerable areas using MCE techniques. Slope, Aspect, Curvature, Soil, and Distance from Drainage, Land use, Precipitation, Flow Direction, and Flow Accumulation are taken as the causative factors for flooding in Lower Indus Basin. Analytical Hierarchy Process-AHP was used for the calculation of weights of all these factors. Finally, a flood hazard Map of Lower Indus Basin was generated which delineates the flood prone areas in the Sindh province along Indus River Basin that could be inundated by potential flooding in future. It is aimed that flood hazard mapping and risk assessment using open source geographic information system can serve as a handy tool for the development of land-use strategies so as to decrease the impact from flooding.
Highlights
Flooding has been one of the recurring occurred natural disasters that inflict irrecoverable and detrimental impacts on humans, property and environment [1]
Multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) methods have been applied in several studies
Since 80 per cent of data used by decision makers is related geographically [10], Geographical Information System (GIS) may provide more and better information about decision making situations
Summary
Flooding has been one of the recurring occurred natural disasters that inflict irrecoverable and detrimental impacts on humans, property and environment [1]. Hussain et al (2011) emphasize that natural disasters irrespective of any type induce considerable damages to both properties and people [3]. Mainly during the monsoon seasons, Pakistan encounters flood events which cause substantial losses to livelihood, properties, settlement, roadways, livestock and agricultural lands. Heavy flooding in the Indus, Kabul, and Swat Rivers resulted in the life loss of a large number of people along with considerable damage to settlements, infrastructure and agriculture along with river embankments. Various hydrological approaches have been proposed by researchers These methods include traditional approaches like rainfall-runoff modeling techniques and contemporary approaches like data-driven techniques for generating the accurate flood models. The major objective of this study is to generate flood risk and vulnerability map of lower Indus Basin on the basis of land use, hydrological and geomorphological features. GIS is extensively utilized in this paper for the integration of several layers which depict rainfall, land-use, elevation and slope, and soil
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