FLOOD MANAGEMENT IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: ROLE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS

Abstract

The worst flooding that ever hit Bosnia was in May 2014. The official estimates indicate that over 1.5 million people were affected in Bosnia and Serbia after a week of flooding. The assessments of the damage in Bosnia go up to €2billion of euro. The loss in floods is estimated 5 to 10% of GDP (as per WorldBank estimate). The effective floodplain management is a combination of the corrective and preventative measures for reducing flood damage. These measures require integrating data from a variety of sources, including zoning, subdivision, or building requirements, and the special-purpose floodplain ordinances.There are varieties of tools to generate a flood forecasting model to identify the potentially affected zones, so as to prioritize for remediation or the damage assessment. Furthermore, it is possible to analyze the time-related data and to explore trends and phenomena, to conduct the historical analysis and ―what–if‖ scenarios, and to track and monitor events such as excessive rainfall, track water levels, etc. Bosnia is just starting to develop these tools and methods and this could be the way to improve capability to tackle such natural disasters. This paper describes some applications of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in identifying flood hazard zones and flood shelters and are therefore important tools for planners and decision makers. The purpose is to describe a simple and efficient methodology to accurately delineate flood inundated areas, flood-hazard areas, and suitable areas for flood shelter to minimize flood impacts.