Assessment of coastal flood risks in a selected urban area in Bangladesh

Md. Ziaur Rahman and Aysha Akter ()
Additional contact information
Md. Ziaur Rahman: Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology (CUET)
Aysha Akter: Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology (CUET)

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2024, vol. 120, issue 15, No 9, 13899-13949

Abstract: Abstract The coastal Patuakhali district in Bangladesh is highly susceptible to catastrophic flooding due to its geophysical location. Saving the coastal settlements from these frequent and extreme flooding events is challenging. Thus, there is an urgent need for a detailed flood vulnerability, risk, and capacity assessment study in this area. This study attempted to provide a comprehensive assessment and mapping of coastal flood risk, identifying the most flood-vulnerable regions of the Patuakhali district to achieve efficient flood mitigation strategies. To generate a complete coastal flood risk scenario, this study simultaneously applied people’s perception-based risk assessment using the MCDA, AHP, GIS, and RS-based advanced methodologies. Based on the combined judgments of both people’s perceptions and experiences, GIS- and RS-based mapping, this study predicted a high flood risk for the studied area. Firstly, from people’s perception and expert opinions-based approach, this study estimated a high flood risk (0.886) for the coastal Patuakhali district. Secondly, individual hazard scores of 0.765 and vulnerability scores of 0.644 were obtained during this assessment, which seems reasonable. However, their combined results produced a significant flood risk due to the lower community capacity (0.556) to withstand flood damage. Finally, a flood risk map was developed with the weighted overlay tool, considering ten flood-causing factors throughout the mapping process. Findings showed the majority of Patuakhali district’s central, north-central, most southern, and south-eastern char and island area as being in a very high flood risk zone due to its high population density, development of in-built infrastructure, lower elevation, flat topography, and lack of vegetation cover. This information is supposed to support the relevant authorities and decision-makers.

Keywords: Coastal flood risks; Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA); Analytical hierarchy process (AHP); Geographic Information System (GIS); Remote Sensing (RS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11069-024-06752-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:120:y:2024:i:15:d:10.1007_s11069-024-06752-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-024-06752-5

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().