Flood Susceptibility Zonation of Paschim Medinipur and Hooghly District in West Bengal, India Using EDAS Model

Paschim Medinipur and Hooghly have a very long history of flood hazard occurrences due to water overflow in rivers in the late monsoon period. In recent years, flood hazards have become more frequent in the form of flash floods and urban floods due to changes in the natural environment, land use, and climate. The present chapter has presented the flood hazards susceptible zones in the districts of Paschim Medinipur and Hooghly in West Bengal. To conduct the study, nine flood conditioning factors were selected for the flood susceptibility modeling process. The researcher has used the latest MCDM tool, the EDAS model, to calculate the appraisal score and rank the parameters according to the result. The results reveal that the majority of the study area is covered by moderate to very high flood vulnerable zones, and the areas (i.e., north of Jhargram and Medinipur sub-divisions), which have comparatively high elevations, cover low flood vulnerable zones. A total of 118 past flood occurrences were marked for the validation of the produced map. The ROC-AUC analysis was used to measure the accuracy of the flood-prone zone map, and the results reveal an accuracy of 0.812 (very good). This chapter offers a holistic view of the major parameters that influence flood hazards and the zones that are vulnerable to flood occurrences.