Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

17 Flash Flood Susceptibility Mapping of a Himalayan River Basin Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Analysis and GIS

Pratik Dash^1,*, Kasturi Mukherjee ², and Surajit Ghosh³

¹ Department of Geography, Khejuri College (affiliated with Vidyasagar University), Purba Medinipur 721431, India ² Department of Geography, Adamas University, Kolkata 700126, India ³ International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka^* Corresponding author

17.1 Introduction

Among several hazards, the hydrological-meteorological disaster, more specifically flooding, is one of the most commonly occurring and impactful natural calamities worldwide (Shen and Hwang, 2019). The magnitude and frequency of floods, and resulting damage, loss, and casualties are surprisingly high for developing countries, like India, China, Bangladesh, etc. (Nkwunonwo et al., 2020). Floods are primarily caused by various hydro-meteorological factors, i.e. heavy downpours, snow melt, storm surges, etc. Severity of this flooding is increasing day-by-day due to rapid urbanization, land-use dynamics, river flow control, and climate change (Dash and Punia, 2019). Due to such environmental changes, the flash flood situation becomes more common in mountainous topography, especially in the snow-fed river catchments of the Himalaya.

In the Himalayan region, flood disasters are often triggered by intense accumulation of moisture that leads to cloudbursts. The torrential downpour not only causes flash floods, but also landslides that, ...