Prioritization of Susceptibility Zones for Multi-Hazard in Jammu Division of the North-West Himalayas, India for Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract

Environmental hazards have always been a source of serious concern as they are becoming more severe and wider in scope, enhancing the risk of additional losses to the environment and public health. The comprehensive risk assessment has emerged as a core component of disaster mitigation strategy. After the international convention on sustainable development in 1992, the multi-hazard approach is widely used as part of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategy. Lying in the vicinity of the North-West Himalayan region, Jammu Division is prone to multiple hazards which have led to numerous causalities. In this study, landslides, floods, earthquakes, droughts, forest fires and soil erosion are considered for prioritizing risk from multi-hazard. Analytical Hierarchy Process have been adopted for data processing for the standardisation and normalisation of the weights. The area prone to multiple hazards is delineated after overlaying all the individual assessment of hazard events using weights computed by an objective approach. The multi-hazard susceptibility map is categorised into five zones: very low, low, moderate, high and very high. The findings revealed that 43.43 % of area lying in south eastern, central and eastern part is suffering from multiple hazards are prioritized for preventing communities to suffer from the multiple hazards. This area lies in central part of the study area in proximity to faults and weak lithology. The identified area under multi-hazard should be well studied for potential cascading of hazards. The targeted interventions and proactive measures should be adopted for enhancing the resilience and disaster risk reduction. The prioritized zones will be extremely valuable for risk profiling, vulnerability assessment and formulation or revision of DRR strategy action plans.