Abstract
ABSTRACTA multi-criteria analysis (MCA) approach to describe the effective utilization of geospatial techniques for disaster risk reduction at village level in Kopili River Basin (KRB) of Assam State, India is presented. The KRB is chronically flood affected due to seasonal monsoon and rise in water levels of Kopili River. Based on the MCA approach using flood hazard layer derived from the spatio-multi-temporal historic satellite data-sets (comprising of sensors from RISAT-1 SAR, Radarsat SAR and IRS AWiFS), socio-economic data (based on five census variables), infrastructure (road network) and land use vulnerabilities (cropped and uncropped areas), flood risk zones are derived. Our study elucidates that 24,837 ha of crop area spread across 95 villages in the KRB falls in high risk zone, about 39,209 ha distributed in 150 villages falls under moderate-high risk zones and remaining area spread over 162 villages is more or less unaffected. The proposed approach can be applied elsewhere in other river basins to estimate the flood risk so as to mitigate the disaster risk posed by the floods.
Highlights
Brahmaputra river basin in India is chronically flood affected owing to its large catchment area which frequently overtop its bankful discharge and submerge the Brahmaputra plains (Kale 2003; Prasad et al 2006, Dikshit and Dikshit 2014)
The flood risk assessment is carried out by using multi-criteria analysis (MCA) approach which in the present study is a result of the product of flood hazard and vulnerability, which is a function of Socio-economic, Infrastructure and land use vulnerability indices
The main objective of the study is to develop an approach based on MCA and geographic information system (GIS) to assess the flood risk by integrating the flood hazard zonation with social, infrastructure and land use vulnerabilities at village level keeping the Kopili River Basin (KRB) as one of the case studies
Summary
Brahmaputra river basin in India is chronically flood affected owing to its large catchment area which frequently overtop its bankful discharge and submerge the Brahmaputra plains (Kale 2003; Prasad et al 2006, Dikshit and Dikshit 2014). The physiography and unique orographic position of the basin coupled with high dynamic monsoon setting often leads to repeated colossal floods in the region. There are multitude of factors which contribute to the perennial flood problems of the Brahmaputra basin such as tremendous population pressure intruding into the flood plains of the river, the menace of bank erosion and siltation of the main channel and its tributaries leading to severe drainage congestion (Minakshi and Goswami 2014). The floods in the basin are causing severe damage to the livestock, property and infrastructure on a repeated basis during every monsoon season (Bhatt et al 2013). An increase of 28% of rainfall during the month of June 2012 had led to breaching of the embankments of Brahmaputra tributaries at 43 locations which has caused serious damage to the Assam state (IFRC 2012). The vulnerability to flood disasters due to increase in extreme precipitation events coupled with the rise in the
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