GIS Based Delineation of Flood Susceptibility Mapping Using Analytic Hierarchy Process in East Vidarbha Region, India

Ever increasing anthropogenic activities and, changes in geological, hydrological and climate factors has increased the occurrence of disaster events such as floods. Floods has caused debilitating effects worldwide by affecting people physically, emotionally and financially by virtue of displacements, lost of livelihoods, spread of water borne diseases and mortality of both humans and several wildlife species. Many environmental, geological, and anthropogenic factors shape the susceptibility of different areas. Flood conditioning factors such as slope, TWI, elevation, soil texture, LULC, Geomorphology and Drainage Density affects the flood susceptibility. With the advancement of GIS tools and ease of access to remote sensing data, flood susceptibility mapping is increasingly being used to demarcate high flood prone areas and to understand the relative effect of each flood conditioning factor on occurrence of floods. East Vidarbha region which has faced high intensity floods in recent past has been chosen to investigate the influence of all these flood conditioning factors using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP is a multi-criteria decision analysis technique, used in range of applications to assess the relative weight of each conditioning factor for the susceptibility mapping. Our results show that, most of the study area falls under moderate flood susceptibility i.e., 91.28%. However, looking at the poor socio-economic status of people living in the East Vidarbha region, the vulnerability to moderate flood susceptibility could be very high. This study stands helpful to decision makers to install prevention structures in areas with high flood susceptibility and socio-economically backward areas with moderate flood susceptibility. The study will also be helpful to mark the high flood susceptible areas and preparing the villagers in these areas to make suitable actions to mitigate the risks arising from future floods.