District Flood Severity Index

District Flood Severity Index Latest News

Researchers from IIT Delhi and IIT Gandhinagar have developed a District Flood Severity Index.

About District Flood Severity Index

• It accounts for the historical severity of floods in India based on the number of people they have affected and the spread and duration of such floods.
• Parameters used
  • It takes into account the mean duration in days of all flooding events in a district.
  • Percentage of area that is historically flooded
  • Total number of deaths, number of people injured
  • Population in the district.
• It is developed using the India Flood Inventory with Impacts (IFI-Impacts) database containing data of variables representing the occurrence of floods and damage due to floods.
• India Flood Inventory with Impacts contains death and damage statistics, and combines population and historically flooded area information sourced from a national hydrologic-hydrodynamic modeling system.
• Since the district is the most relevant unit for planning and decision making, a DFSI would be of immense value for flood management.

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Key Findings of District Flood Severity Index

• Patna turns out to be number one on the index followed by many districts in the Indo-Gangetic Plain and in Assam.
• Thiruvananthapuram is number one in terms of flooding events, it is absent in the top 30 districts in the flood severity index.
• Dhemaji, Kamrup, and Nagaon districts in Assam are three of the five districts in India that have experienced over 178 flooding events, or more than three events per year on an average.
• Urban flooding occurs partly because of hydrometeorological reasons and also due to unwise urban development.

Source: TH