TITLE:
Flood Vulnerability Assessment Using Satellite Imagery Data
AUTHORS:
Efthymia Koliokosta
KEYWORDS:
Coastal Flood, Riverine Flood, Vulnerability Assessment, Retrospective Analysis, Policy Making, Decision Making, Sustainability
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.11 No.12,
December
8,
2023
ABSTRACT: As
flood extreme occurrences are projected to increase in intense and frequency
due to climate change, the assessment of vulnerability and the identification
of the most vulnerable areas, populations, assets and systems are an urgent need.
Vulnerability has been widely discussed and several flood projection tools have
been developed using complex hydrological models. However, despite the
significant contribution of flood projection maps to predicting the impact of
potential floods, they are difficult and impractical to use by stakeholders and
policy makers, while they have proven to be inefficient and out of date in
several cases. This research aims to cover the gaps in coastal and riverine
flood management, developing a method that models flood patterns, using
geospatial data of past large flood disasters. The outcomes of this research
produce a five scale vulnerability assessment method, which could be widely
implemented in all sectors, including transport, critical infrastructure,
public health, tourism, constructions etc. Moreover, they could facilitate
decision making and provide a wide range of implementation by all stakeholders,
insurance agents, land-use planners, risk experts and of course individual.
According to this research, the majority of the elements exposed to flood
hazards, lay at specific combinations between 1) elevation (Ei) and 2) distance from water-masses (Di), expressed as (Ei,
Di), including: 1) in
general landscapes: ([0 m, 1 m), [0 km, 6 km), [0 m - 3 m), [0 km, 3 km)) and ([0 m - 6 m), [0 km, 1 km)), 2) in low laying regions: ([0 m, 1 m), [0 km, 40 km), [0 m - 3 m), [0 km, 30 km)) and ([0 m - 6 m), [0 km, 15 km)) and 2) in riverine regions: ([0 m, 4 m), [0 km, 3 km)). All elements laying
on these elevations and distances from water masses are considered extremely
and highly vulnerable to flood extremes.