Abstract
In any Watershed management studies, demarcation of flood prone area is one of the key tasks. Flood management is essential to shrink the flood effects on human lives and livelihoods. Main goal of the present research is to investigate the application of the Frequency Ratio (FR) and Shannon’s Entropy (SE) models for flood susceptibility appraisal of Ponnaiyar River basin in Tamil Nadu, India. Initially, the flood inventory map was prepared using overlay analysis (slope, 20 meter contour intervals and drainage patterns) and extensive field surveys. In total, 136 flood locations were noted in the study area. Out of these, 95 (70%) floods were randomly selected as training data and the remaining 41 (30%) floods were used for the validation purposes. Further, flood conditioning factors such as lithology, land-use, distance from rivers, soil depth, rainfall, slope angle, slope aspect, curvature, topographic wetness index (TWI) and altitude were prepared from the spatial database. Then, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were drawn for produced flood susceptibility maps and the area under the curves (AUCs) was computed. The final results indicated that the FR (AUC = 80.20%) and SE (AUC = 79.30%) models have almost similar and reasonable results. Therefore, these flood susceptibility maps can be useful for researchers and planner in flood mitigation strategies.
Highlights
Flood is one of the most common natural disaster events and it creates many environmental problems due to rapid urban growth and climate change (Kjeldsen, 2010)
These results demonstrated that the flooding mostly occurs near to the river bank and rarely far from the rivers
Apart from studies related to investigations and improvements of river system, simultaneous action for studies of watersheds and adoption of measures aimded at runoff and water flow retardation is required
Summary
Flood is one of the most common natural disaster events and it creates many environmental problems due to rapid urban growth and climate change (Kjeldsen, 2010). A deep tropical depression came through the Bay of Bengal and hit the south-eastern coast of India on 10-11 November 2015, causing heavy rain. Heavy rain resumed during Nov 16-19, with 30-37 cm of rain accumulating over the 9-day period. After pausing for several days, heavy rains have resumed in early December and in some locations rain is projected to continue until 8-10 December. Chennai received over 33 cm of rain in a 24-hour period from December 1-2, causing widespread flooding and damage. In Tamil Nadu, Chennai city, Cuddalore, Kanchipuram, and Tiruvallur districts are worst affected. The floods which occurred are the worst in 100 years and the people got stranded in the midnight since flood water entered into the houses while they are asleep, especially in Chennai. The Government of India has IJARSG– An Open Access Journal (ISSN 2320 – 0243)
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