WebFRIS: An efficient web-based decision support tool to disseminate end-to-end risk information for flood management

Abstract

The present study describes the development of a web-based flood risk information system ‘WebFRIS’ for Jagatsinghpur district, a severely flood-prone region in Eastern India. The WebFRIS is designed by using various readily available open-source web tools and packages such as Google Map, PHP, MySQL, and JSON. Special emphasis is directed towards designing the layout and architecture, to be easily accessible by any end-user irrespective of any technical know-how. The WebFRIS illustrates spatial maps of flood hazard, socio-economic vulnerability, and flood risk at the village level for two-time scenarios. While analyzing a set of graphical statistics depicting the changes in flood risk components, a significant increase in high and very-high categories of both flood hazard (~140%) and socio-economically vulnerable villages (~68%) is noticed during Scenario-I. The number of villages facing compound risk (contributed equally by flood hazard and socio-economic vulnerability) nearly doubled in Scenario-I. A spatial analysis of diametric changes in flood risk shows that a large proportion of villages in Balikuda, Ersama, and Tirtol tehsils have undergone radical changes. Following these observations, a set of possible engineering, social, and policy measures are proposed, whose implementation in the near future is expected to reinforce flood management in the study area. The WebFRIS architecture is flexible, easy-to-use; it is expected to provide crucial lessons to the local bodies, town-planners, water professionals, flood experts, and also the citizens, a precious knowledge on flood risk management. The WebFRIS may be considered as a precious cartographic product for environmental management. The proposed web platform is generic, as it can be applied to study other inter-related systems such as environmental protection, land-use planning, coastal habitat restoration, and community resilience building.Software and data availabilityName: Web Flood Risk Information System -WebFRISDeveloper: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, MumbaiContact Information: (1) Mohit P. Mohanty: mohit2012.env@gmail.com; Environmental Science and Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, and (2) Subhankar Karmakar: skarmakar@iitb.ac.in; Environmental Science and Engineering Department (http://www.esed.iitb.ac.in/), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India.Software(s) required: Internet browser (latest versions are recommended), and MIKE FLOOD 2018 or higher (https://www.mikepoweredbydhi.com/products/mike-flood).Programming languages: HTML, PhP, MySQL, JSONAvailability and cost: Any user can access WebFRIS for no cost at https://webfrisiitb.com/. The login credentials for entering WebFRIS are available with reasonable requests to the authors. The flood model set-up and input data are not available freely due to data confidentiality.