brahmaputra flood case study

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Case Study – Ganges/Brahmaputra River Basin

Flooding is a significant problem in the Ganges and Brahmaputra river basin. They cause large scale problems in the low lying country of Bangladesh. There are both human and natural causes of flooding in this area.

Human Causes

Deforestation – Population increase in Nepal means there is a greater demand for food, fuel and building materials. As a result, deforestation has increased significantly. This reduces interception and increases run-off. This leads to soil erosion . River channels fill with soil, the capacity of the River Ganges and Brahmaputra is reduced and flooding occurs.

Natural Causes

• Monsoon Rain
• Melting Snow
• Tectonic Activity – The Indian Plate is moving towards the Eurasian Plate. The land where they meet (Himalayas) is getting higher and steeper every year ( fold mountains ). As a result, the soil becomes loose and is susceptible to erosion. This causes more soil and silt in rivers. This leads to flooding in Bangladesh.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Analysing frequent extreme flood incidences in Brahmaputra basin, South Asia

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Geoinformatics, Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Software, Validation, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America

• Amit Kumar, 
• Subhasree Mondal, 

• Published: August 22, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384
• Reader Comments

The present study is focused on the flood inundation in Brahmaputra Basin, which is one of the most recurrent and destructive natural disasters of the region. The flood inundation was assessed using C-Band Sentinel 1A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) during 2015–2020 with precipitation patterns, runoff discharge, and their impacts on land cover in the basin. The study exhibited a very high precipitation during monsoon in the upper catchment resulting in severe flood inundation in downslopes of Brahmaputra Basin. A very high (900–2000 mm) to extremely high (>2000 mm) monthly cumulative precipitation in the south and south-eastern parts of basin led to high discharge (16,000 to 18,000 m 3 s -1 ) during July-August months. The river discharge increases with cumulative effects of precipitation and melting of snow cover during late summer and monsoon season, and induced flood inundation in lower parts of basin. This flood has largely affected agricultural land (>77% of total basin), forests (~3%), and settlement (426 to 1758 km 2 ) affecting large wildlife and livelihood during 2015–2020. The study highlights the regions affected with recurrent flood and necessitates adopting an integrated, multi-hazard, multi-stakeholder approach with an emphasis on self-reliance of the community for sustenance with local resources and practices.

Citation: Kumar A, Mondal S, Lal P (2022) Analysing frequent extreme flood incidences in Brahmaputra basin, South Asia. PLoS ONE 17(8): e0273384. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384

Editor: Bijeesh Kozhikkodan Veettil, Đại Học Duy Tân: Dai Hoc Duy Tan, VIET NAM

Received: April 1, 2022; Accepted: August 7, 2022; Published: August 22, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Kumar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data is available in public repository https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.20152751.v1 .

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1. Introduction

The trend of global warming induces longer conditions of no rain followed by a sudden bout of excessive precipitation, causing extreme weather events particularly floods [ 1 – 3 ]. The increasing temperature produces more energy in the Earth’s system, specifically increasing the probability of evaporation from the surface water and oceans augmenting cloud formation [ 4 ]. At higher temperatures, the air can hold more moisture content that tends to rise in the precipitation intensity, its duration, and frequency [ 5 – 7 ]. Therefore, floods are triggered by intense precipitation, anomalous longer duration, close repetition of precipitations, topographical characteristics or a combination of all these phenomenon [ 8 – 11 ]. For example, an extended period of very heavy precipitation leads to the development of a low-pressure system apart from extended monsoon depression during the Kerala flood in 2019 [ 12 – 14 ].

In the twenty-first century, floods emerged as one of the most frequent and dangerous natural hazards worldwide [ 15 – 18 ]. from the flood mostly occurs due to torrential precipitation, but there are various factors such as poor drainage system and water storage management, rapid land transformation due to anthropogenic influences, river structure and relief of region, which are also major contributing factors augmenting the severity of extreme flood incidents [ 19 – 21 ]. Particularly in India sub-continent flood is a very common natural disaster during the southwest monsoon (June-August) [ 22 ]. The combined attribution of monsoonal precipitation and rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers accelerates the downwards flows of water in river during the summer season [ 23 , 24 ] which makes a very high flow rate of water compared to the capacity of the river [ 25 – 27 ]. Most of the Indian river originating from Himalayan region has similar nature of flow, during late summer and monsoon river flow increases by multiple times with combined melting of snow and heavy precipitation. Among all the different rivers originating from Himalayan regions, Brahmaputra river in eastern India is one of the most affected flood hazard regions in the world [ 28 ]. The Brahmaputra basin is affected every year by catastrophic floods. The melting of eastern Himalayan glaciers during and before the Indian summer monsoon intensifies downstream and causes flood in valley of Northeast India [ 29 ]. The factors for flood severity apart from high-flow of river includes rampant deforestation [ 30 ], high impervious surface expansion are related to anthropogenic influences rising flood severity. Around 4,500 km embankment along the Brahmaputra is enclosed by the rivers that lead to an acceleration in the river flow and often increase the flood susceptibility [ 31 ]. The 65% of annual precipitation (being of the order of 165 cm) in the lower basin (Assam) is caused by the South-West monsoon. The major parts of the runoff in the river were introduced through the heavy precipitation (~ 510–640 cm) in Arunachal Pradesh (Abo and Mishmi hill), and moderately high precipitation (250–510 cm) in the Brahmaputra plain. Therefore, in the present study, the spatial patterns of frequent flood inundation in the Brahmaputra basin were analysed for the recent years (2015–2020) and its impacts on the land use/land cover (LULC) were discussed.

2. Study area

Brahmaputra basin is located in the north-eastern parts of the Indian Subcontinent and lies between 23.9°N to 31.5°N latitude and 82.1°E to 97.7°E longitude ( Fig 1 ). The river Brahmaputra originates from the Angsi glacier located in the south of Tibet (at an elevation of 5300 m) and falls in the Bay of Bengal after travelling 2,880 km through Tibet, India, and Bangladesh. The one-third portion of the Indian Brahmaputra basin is in Assam state of India. The Brahmaputra Valley within Assam consists of vast alluvial floodplains covering an area of about 56480 sq. km (altitude 34130 m). The upper part of the basin lies in the trans-Himalaya (Tibet), greater Himalaya (Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh), middle Himalaya (Arunachal Pradesh), and Shivalik range (lower part of Arunachal Pradesh) as the lower part of Himalaya. The lower and middle part of the basin lies in the low-lying plain valley primarily in Assam (India) and Bangladesh, which formed due to continuous fluvial deposition of Himalayan streams and rivers. There are various subsidiary rivers, which confluence with Brahmaputra River in the low-lying Assam valley including Subansiri (originates in Tibetan region), Kameng (Indo-Tibet border), Beki and Sankosh (northern Bhutan), Manas (southern Bhutan), while rivers Teesta, Rangeet, Rangpo (originates from Sikkim) confluence in Bangladesh. The Brahmaputra and its tributaries in India (Assam), Bangladesh, and Bhutan elucidates intense environmental risk due to climate change and the extensive increase in anthropogenic activities, led to exposure to floods, riverbank erosion, landslide [ 27 ].

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g001

3. Data used and methodology

To deduce the flood inundation and its impact on the Brahmaputra basin, various concurrent SAR imagery for 2015–2020, and ESA-CCI land use/ land cover (300m) were used. The GPM precipitation of 0.1° was used for analysing monthly and the sum of seasonal precipitation (June-September) and anomalous precipitation between 2015–2020, whereas long-term mean (2001–2020) precipitation was used to estimate precipitation anomaly, with reference to the mean of the respective time period from 2000 to 2020. The Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) ERA5 river discharge reanalysis products having horizontal grid resolution of 0.1° were used to estimate the river discharge of Brahmaputra in the eastern-lower part of Arunachal and upper part of Bangladesh.

Due to the large basin coverage, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform was used to execute the task impeccably for inundation mapping and to deduce flood impact on LULC on a parallel processing architecture with a powerful web platform for cloud-based processing for remote sensing datasets. The Sentinel 1A/1B GRD datasets of the VH polarisation with ascending pass were retrieved from ESA for the concurrent flood during 2015–2020 in the Brahmaputra basin. The orbit correction and noise removal methods were applied to improve the geometric accuracy by ~10 cm [ 32 ] and remove border noise and low-intensity noise. Furthermore, radiometric calibration followed by a Lee sigma Speckle filter (5x5 window size) was performed for the qualitative assessment using the backscatter coefficient and making the image more interpretable. The Terrain correction applied to the filtered image employing the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) one arc-second digital elevation model (DEM) to rectify the distortions including foreshortening, layover, or shadowing effects. The GRD data of Sentinel 1A/1B provided by ESA has geometric distortions due to complex terrain and when the sensor is not pointing directly at the Nadir location so ortho-rectification was necessary before the classification of flood and non-flood data. The ortho-rectification is a substitute of geo-referencing method of remote sensing datasets. It converts images into suitable form for maps by removing the sensor, satellite motion and surface related geometric distortions from Level 1 SAR imagery. Later, pre-processed image backscatter coefficients were converted to decibel. For the Brahmaputra basin, the backscatter intensity of VH varies between -15 to -20 dB during the pre-flood period, while the backscatter intensity was approximately -25 to -30 dB during the post-flood analysis. Backscatter ratio methods were adopted following Lal et al. (2020) [ 17 ] and it’s one of the widely used techniques for flood inundation mapping [ 33 , 34 ]. The backscatter ratio method estimates the changes in due to flood inundation the during flood mosaic backscatter SAR data were divided from pre-flood mosaic SAR backscatter data to deduce the flood inundation. The resultant from backscatter ratio method shows a change between pre-flood and post-flood backscatter coefficient and value of 1.26 selected based on a trial-and-error approach. Using the resultant value binary image was created for flood inundation, value above 1.26 assigned as 1 (flood-inundated pixel) and value below 1.26 assigned as 0 (no-data). The flood inundation binary images show all the permanent water bodies as flood pixels, the JRC Global Surface Water dataset of 30 m resolution was used to refine the flood water classification by masking the surface water bodies. A digital elevation model (WWF Hydro SHEDS, a spatial resolution of 3 arc-seconds) was used to remove blind spots having higher slopes to eliminate its confusion with flooded pixels. Furthermore, the connectivity of the flood pixels is assessed to reduce the noise. ESA-CCI land cover of 300m spatial resolution was used to glean the impact of flood inundation on different LULC classifications during respective years using overlay analysis in the GEE environment.

The code for assessing the flood inundation of any region using Sentinel 1A/1B is available at https://code.earthengine.google.com/ee2cdaeff8adab3f59c8e4a21e6868c1 .

4. Results and discussion

4.1 land use/ land cover change in brahmaputra basin.

The land use/ land cover change (LULCC) was analysed using the ESA-CCI LULC data set for the Brahmaputra basin covering part of India, Tibet, Bhutan, and Bangladesh during 2000–2019. The study exhibited the dominance of grassland (33.72%; 225905.7 km 2 ) primarily in the upper parts of the Brahmaputra basin (Tibet) followed by forest cover (30.19%; 202289.9 km 2 ) primarily in the lower Himalayan regions, and agriculture (26.89%; 180160.3 km 2 ) primarily in Assam and Bangladesh. The LULC change in the Indian and Bangladesh regions are primarily due to exponential population growth, lack of proper valuation of ecological services, biological limitation, concurrent flood disaster, and improper management of land by the public. The significant decrease was observed primarily in the agriculture (1.58%; 2853.18 km 2 ), followed by shrubland (28.66%; 3218.67 km 2 ), waterbody (3.76%; 643.41 km 2 ), bare land (0.8%; 119.25 km 2 ) and sparse vegetation (4.85%; 56.7 km 2 ) during 1992–2020. In contrast, increase was evident in settlement (290.16%; 1282.23 km 2 ) followed by wetland (4.03%; 25.11 km 2 ), forest cover (2.1%; 4240.44 km 2 ) and grassland (0.59%; 1343.43 km 2 ) ( Table 1A ). The rise in forest cover and grassland modulates the regional climate as increase in precipitation and decrease in temperature [ 35 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.t001

The major land use transformation was observed from shrubland to forest cover (2786.04 km 2 ), followed by agriculture to forest cover (2761.02 km 2 ), bare land to grassland (2116.62 km 2 ), agricultural land to grassland (1580.76 km 2 ), grassland to bare land (1575.9 km 2 ), agricultural land to settlement (1123.38 km 2 ), forest cover to agricultural land (975.06 km 2 ), shrubland to agricultural land (859.5 km 2 ), grassland to agriculture (824.67 km 2 ) and grassland to forest cover 400.41 km 2 ( Fig 2C , Table 1A ). The major increase of built-up land evidently found in major urban centres including Dhaka, Tezpur, Guwahati, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Shillong, and Itanagar. while the wetland primarily increased in the lower part of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam region altering agricultural land (0.36 km 2 ), shrubland (0.09 km 2 ), forest (33.3 km 2 ), and water body (2.61 km 2 ). The increase of forest cover was evident in southern Bangladesh including Dhaka, Barisal, Khulna, Chittagong, parts of Assam (Karbi Anglong, North Cachar Hills, Kamrup-Guwahati, Bongaigaon, and eastern part of Dhubri), Meghalaya (southern part of West Garo Hills, East Garo Hills, South Garo Hills, West Khasi Hills and East Khasi Hills, and small portion in the Jaintia Hills), Nagaland (Wokha, Mokokchung, Mon, Zunheboto, Dimapur, and Kohima), Arunachal Pradesh (Tirap, Changlang, Lohit, Lower Dibang Valley, East-West Siang, Subansiri and small area of Kameng) and southern hills of Bhutan.

ESA-CCI Land use/land cover map of (a) 2000 (b) 2019 (c) Land Use Transformations (LUT) with change code. Details of the change code discussed in S1 Table .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g002

4.2 Analysing precipitation and river discharge in Brahmaputra basin

The GPM final run-based daily precipitation data were used to deduce cumulative monthly variation of precipitation pattern in the Brahmaputra Basin 2015–2020 (May to August). The study exhibited a spatial variability in cumulative monthly precipitation pattern with extremely high precipitation (>2000 mm) in the lower parts of the basin in contrast to low precipitation (~50–200 mm) in upperparts. Very high precipitation (>900 mm) was observed in highly mountainous terrain area in the lower Brahmaputra Basin (mainly Meghalaya) during June 2015, while the high precipitation (600 to >900 mm) was observed in the major parts of the lower Brahmaputra Basin during June to August 2015, and low precipitation (200 mm– 600 mm) in the part middle part of Brahmaputra Basin and SW Bangladesh and very low precipitation (<200 mm) in the upper Brahmaputra Basin during May to August 2015 ( Fig 3 ). In 2016, there very high precipitation was observed in the Assam valley and some NE Bangladesh during July while a high precipitation in a major part of NE India (Assam valley) and south Bangladesh, alternatively the low (300 – 600mm) precipitation in the entire lower and central part of Brahmaputra Basin ( Fig 3 ). In 2017, high precipitation was observed mainly in the Assam valley and upper parts of Bangladesh during June and August. While moderate precipitation (400 - >800 mm) was observed in parts of the lower Brahmaputra Basin from May to August, in contrast to low precipitation (<400 mm) in the upper part Brahmaputra Basin during the monsoonal period. In 2018, a moderately high (400–800 mm) precipitation was observed in the part of lower Brahmaputra Basin except for lower part of Bangladesh region ( Fig 3 ). In 2019, the high precipitation (>900 mm) was observed in the Assam and Arunachal Pradesh valley) and north-eastern part of Bangladesh during June—July, and a low precipitation in the upper part of Brahmaputra Basin and the south-west Bangladesh ( Fig 3 ). In 2020, very high precipitation was observed in lower Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and northern Bangladesh during June and July with high intensity of precipitation, a moderately high (300–700 mm) precipitation was observed in the lower part of Brahmaputra Basin barring southern Bangladesh, alternatively a low precipitation in the central part of Brahmaputra Basin and southern Bangladesh ( Fig 3 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g003

The precipitation anomaly exhibited a high anomalous precipitation pattern (>2500 mm) in a major part of NE India and NE Bangladesh while a moderate anomalous precipitation pattern (900–2500 mm) in the lower Brahmaputra Basin and the low (100–900 mm) precipitation was observed at the upper part of Brahmaputra Basin from 2015 to 2020 ( Fig 4 ). Highly intensive precipitation was observed in the lower parts of Brahmaputra Basin including Meghalaya, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Sylhet, and Dhaka. While the standard anomaly of precipitation during 2015 was observed as the positive anomalous precipitation in the entire lower Brahmaputra Basin with eastern part of Tibet region. In 2016, anomalous precipitation was observed in southern part of Bangladesh while the negative low anomalous precipitation observed in the entire Brahmaputra Basin. In 2017, the primary high anomalous precipitation was observed in the entire Brahmaputra Basin barring the eastern parts of the lower Basin (negative part). In 2018 and 2019, the negative anomalous precipitation (exhibiting reduction in precipitation) was observed in major parts of Brahmaputra Basin barring the upper east and the Assam valley, which recorded positive anomalous precipitation. In 2020, northern Bangladesh, the southern part of NE India, and the eastern part of Tibet had positive precipitation anomalies barring a few regions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g004

The high river discharge during May to September months are also one of the reasons for flood inundation in the Brahmaputra basin ( Fig 5 ). The high discharge (16,000 to– 18,000 m 3 s -1 ) during August 2017 and July 2020 is analogous to the high precipitation in the region ( Fig 6 ). The study highlights that the river discharge depends on the precipitation concentrations as observed during precipitation events primarily in upper catchment and accumulation in lower catchment ultimately leading to floods in the lower Brahmaputra basin. The positive normalized anomalous precipitation comprised a large area in the months of May, June, and August, but later in July, the negative normalized anomalous precipitation was recorded. High increasing levels mainly showed in the central parts in Brahmaputra Basin, alternatively, in July the middle part highly decreased and the upper part steadily. In 2017, high variations of precipitation were observed in monsoonal periods except for August because it was observed in highly positive normalized precipitation. While in 2019, the positive normalized precipitation was observed in May and July months at the core flood-prone zone of the study area.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g005

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g006

4.3 Impact of flood inundation in Brahmaputra basin

The Brahmaputra River has a long history of flood leading to large destruction almost every year and therefore, the study highlights the use of SAR multi-temporal datasets with precipitation and river discharge to monitor the flood inundation. During late summer and monsoon melting of glaciers and high precipitation especially in the north-eastern part of India accumulate more water in river and leads to very high river discharge, leading to flood inundation in the lower part of basin. The cumulative impact of flood inundation was significantly observed on agricultural land with highest inundation during 2017 (36952.45 km 2 ; 90.96% of total LULC in the basin) and minimum during 2016 (34790.22 km 2 ; 77 .84%). Forest is the second most affected flood with a highest inundation during 2016 (5.40%; 2413.12 km 2 ) and a lowest inundation during 2017 (2.74%; 1111.72 km 2 ) disturbed the biodiversity, farming, and also wildlife ( Fig 7 ). In contrast, the settlement areas were slightly low in coverage but had large impacts on mankind and were primarily affected during 2016 (1758.19 km 2 ), and least during 2018 (426.42 km 2 ) ( Table 2 ; Fig 7 ). Although the large parts of the Brahmaputra basin are under cultivation and have been the largest impacts due to flood inundation. Bangladesh is mainly covered by rivers and the majority of its parts are affected by the flood inundation during monsoon and post-monsoon periods. In 2020, Bangladesh’s highly affected area is 41266 km 2 and the lowest affected area is in 2015, 25690.49 km 2 . And then in India Assam valley was invaded by floods generally each year 2018 and 2019 were the most impactful times for Assam (10173.78 km 2 and 10172.78 km 2 ), but in 2020 it was the least affected 8920.18 km 2 . West Bengal was also oppressed by floods in most of the year, in 2016 there was a high impact of (2828.53 km 2 ) and then it slowly lessened towards 2020. In contrast, flood inundation has a lower impact on the area of China, Bhutan, and some parts of NE India (Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh) countries due to its safer site and situation ( Table 1B ).

Impact of flood inundation on ESA-CCI LULC for Brahmaputra Basin during (a) 2015 (b) 2016 (c) 2017 (d) 2018 (e) 2019 (f) 2020. Contains information from OpenStreetMap and OpenStreetMap Foundation, which is made available under the Open Database License.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.g007

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.t002

5. Conclusion

Flood is one of the most common phenomena in the Brahmaputra Basin affecting a large area, assets, and population during monsoon and post-monsoon periods. The present study highlights the spatio-temporal patterns of flood inundation in the entire Brahmaputra Basin analysing its main causative factors viz ., cumulative precipitation patterns (2015 to 2020). The study exhibited a high (900–2000 mm) to very high (>2000 mm) monthly cumulative precipitation in the part of NE India (Mawsynram of Khasi hill in Meghalaya) and NE Bangladesh in the Brahmaputra Basin. The normalized precipitation indicated a rise in precipitation patterns in the Central and lower parts of the Brahmaputra Basin during 2015–2020. The temporal optical satellite data based LULC change exhibited a significant decline in shrubland (28.66%, 3218.67 km 2 ), in contrast to a significant rise in settlement (290.16%; 1282.23 km 2 ) in the region. The high to the moderate impact of flood inundation observed in Bangladesh (vary between 63% to 78% compared to total inundation in the basin); Assam (vary between 14% to 25% compared to total inundation in the basin), and West Bengal (vary between 4% to 6.5% compared to total inundation in the basin). The flood had severely affected ~85% of total agricultural land, and ~2% of settlements in the Brahmaputra Basin during the observation periods. Although the lower Brahmaputra Basin has a long history of flood inundation, the recent built-up growth and significant land use transformation exacerbate flood vulnerability and risk to a greater extent. Thus, there is an urgent need to reduce the increasing impact of floods by adopting proper afforestation measures in the upper catchments to reduce the soil erosion; the de-siltation process of the Brahmaputra River in Assam and Bangladesh to increase the depth of the river. Nevertheless, the region is prone to flood, and thus the controlled built-up development is pertinent. Settlements in the study region are surrounded by enumerable operational holdings of varying shapes and sizes. This risk shows high population pressure on arable land that leads to further fragmentation. The study will help to contribute towards sustainable land use planning and management towards the protection of extremely rich biodiversity of the Brahmaputra valley.

Supporting information

S1 table. area (in km 2 ) transformation and code for lut of lulc corresponding to year 2001 from 2019 as shown in fig 2 ..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273384.s001

Acknowledgments

Preet Lal is thankful to Michigan State University library for open access funding through open access journal publishing agreements with PLOS One. All authors are thankful to editor and anonymous reviewers for critical comments on manuscripts. All authors are also thankful to the ESA Copernicus hub, NASA, and the European Commission for providing free data archives used in the study.

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Home Case Studies From Vulnerability to Resilience Building of Community Living in the Floodplain of Brahmaputra Basin

From Vulnerability to Resilience Building of Community Living in the Floodplain of Brahmaputra Basin

The Context

The eastern part of the Brahmaputra basin represents a severe floodplain area in the state of Assam. The southern valley is highly prone to water-induced hazards such as floods, flash floods, river bank erosion and land degradation. The districts of Jorhat, Golaghat and Majuli island of Upper Assam represents many severe flood-prone areas where the Brahmaputra river and its tributary rivers are comparatively high and have deep channels right from the upper hills of Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh. Due to cloudburst and dynamic rainfall in the catchment area, the river gets charged with enormous amounts of silt which alters the flow and sometime changes the river courses causing untold miseries to the people living in the downstream riverine areas. Flooding and river bank erosion affect all aspects of the land, lives, and livelihoods of the communities living in the region to a significant degree, rendering them homeless and displaced, destroying crops, damaging public property, and worsening development infrastructure. Moreover, annual cycles of flooding cripple people’s resilience and intensify the poverty spiral. The floodplain pockets are the most backward, poorest and almost entirely isolated and inhabited by different people groups including the Assamese, Mising, Fisherman community etc.

The CBDRM Intervention

The Brahmaputra River Basin Resilience Building Programme is a community-based preparedness approach to disaster risk reduction in the floodplain of Jorhat, Golaghat and Majuli districts of Assam. This grassroots development initiative was started by NEADS with support from Oxfam India in 2011 with the aim of preparing communities to meet flood emergencies and mobilising village community institutions at the micro level for long term disaster mitigation.  At present 30 villages are being covered under the programme under three development blocks.

The Core Areas of Intervention

• Institution Building & Disaster Preparedness: The selected communities live in remote disaster prone areas. They are deprived of adequate awareness, skills and various basic facilities, which make them more vulnerable to disasters. Therefore, a collective movement at the community level needs to be started to reduce their vulnerabilities through enhancing their joint participation and capacity. The Duryug Bebosthapana Samiti (Village Disaster Management Committee) could take this role. VDMCs, with support of other sub committees and task forces, is considered as a leading community-based institution that will provide leadership and is primarily responsible for disaster management in their respective villages through community participation, village level funds/other resources as well as leveraging funds from ongoing government schemes/programmes related to development. VDMCs are the driving force of the community, trying to mobilize the community, enhance capacity and knowledge of people, collect and disseminate up to date information and correctly point out the risks/problems, and finding out the possible mitigation measures of the community and initiating action.
• Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH): The main objective of WASH programmes is to reduce the transmission of water-borne diseases and exposure to disease-bearing vectors through the promotion of good hygiene practices, the provision of safe drinking water, the reduction of environmental health risks, the conditions that allow people to live with good health, dignity, comfort and security. Simply providing sufficient water and sanitation facilities will not, on its own, ensure their optimal use or impact on public health. In order to achieve the maximum benefit from a response, it is imperative that disaster-affected people have the necessary information, knowledge and understanding to prevent water- and sanitation-related diseases and to mobilise their involvement in the design and maintenance of those facilities.
• Vulnerable & Resilient Livelihood: Disasters and food insecurity are directly interconnected. Floods destroy agricultural and livestock assets, inputs and production capacity. They interrupt market access, trade and food supply, reduce income, deplete savings and erode livelihoods. Disasters create poverty traps that increase the prevalence of food insecurity and malnutrition. The programme seeks to improve food security and support livelihoods of target communities by providing productive assets for livelihoods and building resilience even when they are disrupted by disasters.
• Advocacy, Mainstreaming & Convergence with Government: To create a scope and opportunity for responsive line departments in the Gaon Panchayat, Block & District level to mainstream disaster risk reduction in governance processes that enable the systematic integration of DRR concerns into all relevant development schemes.

The k ey activities undertaken include:

• Promoting village-wide ‘ Duryug Bebosthapana Samiti’ – ( A grassroot institutional mechanism for preparing community to meet emergencies and mobilizing them for risk reduction).
• Participatory, Vulnerability, Capacity, Assessment (PVCA) and Development planning at micro level (Emphasis is to mainstream disaster risk reduction into development planning).
• Risk mapping and safety planning in the village.
• Established Community Resource Centre for education, information and awareness on DRR.
• Organized emergency mock drill trainings and exercises for risk reduction.
• Establish Raised Granary for safe storage of food grain in the community.
• Emergency country boat & emergency equipments support.
• Installation of flood – resistant hand pumps and sanitation structures.
• Hand pump toolkit and training support for village level mechanics including WASH Committees.
• Imparting training on water chlorination. Facilitation support of hand pump chlorination drive after flood.
• Support of small water treatment units in the riverine community for accessibility of clean water.
• Community awareness raising events on WASH & Public Health Promotion.
• Children centered Public Health Promotion (PHP).
• Sensitisation programme on children risks and safety in school.
• Support to farmers including women for restoration of livelihoods through promotion of Early Harvesting Crop (stress tolerant), System of Rice Intensification (SRI), Kitchen Garden and Livestock.
• Post flood agricultural support to young farmers club.
• Promoting weaving as a rural initiative for economy generation by the women collective.
• Farmers’ capacity building on sustainable agriculture, organic farming, System of Rice Intensification (SRI), livestock management, integrated farming practices and livelihood improvement.
• Building linkages to government line departments for tapping resources under the development schemes.
• Submission of village-wide comprehensive DRR plans to Panchayati Raj Institution through special Gramsabha. Emphasis has been given to disaster perspective development plans at PRI level policy.
• Block level and district level advocacy through ‘Village Disaster Management Committees’ with Line Departments to access services and to mainstream DRR.
• DRR capacity-building events for PRI, Block & Departmental functionaries, and frontline workers including ASHA, AWW, VLEW, PARA-VET etc.
• Effort was on convergence of programmes to build capacities of affected people.

Funding Agency

Oxfam India

The Key Stakeholder Involved

• Village level: Women, children, adolescent girls, elderly, youth, farmers, community.
• Block level: Aanganwadi Workers, ANM, ASHA, health professionals, school teachers, parents from School Management Committees, community-based organisations, representatives from the community.
• District level: District Disaster Management Authority, Deputy Commissioner, Agriculture Department, Public Health Engineering Department, Veterinary Department, Water Resource Department, NGOs/CSOs, Block Development Office.

Project Duration – 2011-2017

Tell us about the extent to which the CBDRM intervention was ‘owned’ by the community. Were local skills and knowledge used? What was the role of the local government? How were the CBDRM activities coordinated? By whom?

To what extent were the most marginalised and at-risk groups included in the cbdrm process focus on women, children and youth, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. are there any other marginalised groups in your society who were included in the cbdrm activities, please reflect on how well the initiative has been able to continue beyond the end of the programme. to what extent were local resources used for the cbdrm activities how long since programme completion have the cbdrm practices continued, please describe how lives have changed since the cbdrm project. think about different people’s levels of resilience and vulnerability..

News from the Columbia Climate School

Future Brahmaputra River Flooding as Climate Warms May Be Underestimated, Study Says

Kevin Krajick

A new study looking at seven centuries of water flow in south Asia’s mighty Brahmaputra River suggests that scientists are underestimating the river’s potential for catastrophic flooding as climate warms. The revelation comes from examinations of tree rings, which showed rainfall patterns going back centuries before instrumental and historical records.

Many researchers agree that warming climate will intensify the seasonal monsoon rains that drive the Brahmaputra, but the presumed baseline of previous natural variations in river flow rests mainly on discharge-gauge records dating only to the 1950s. The new study, based on the rings of ancient trees in and around the river’s watershed, shows that the post-1950s period was actually one of the driest since the 1300s. The rings show that there have been much wetter periods in the past, driven by natural oscillations that took place over decades or centuries. The takeaway: destructive floods probably will come more frequently than scientists have thought, even minus any effects of human-driven climate change. Estimates probably fall short by nearly 40 percent, say the researchers. The findings were just published in the journal Nature Communications.

“The tree rings suggest that the long-term baseline conditions are much wetter than we thought,” said Mukund Palat Rao, a recent PhD. graduate of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study. “Whether you consider climate models or natural variability, the message is the same. We should be prepared for a higher frequency of flooding than we are currently predicting.”

The Brahmaputra is one of the world’s mightiest rivers, flowing under a variety of names and braided routes some 2,900 miles through Tibet, northeast India and Bangladesh. Near its mouth, it combines with India’s Ganga River to create the world’s third largest ocean outflow, behind only the Amazon and the Congo. (It is tied with Venezuela’s Orinoco.) At points, it is nearly 12 miles wide. Its delta alone is home to 130 million Bangladeshis, and many millions more live upstream.

Interactive Map: Flooding in Bangladesh, July 2020

According to the UN, about 30 million Bangladeshis were exposed or living close to flooded areas during July 2020. Flood areas are shown in blue; districts are shaded red by population potentially exposed. Data: Unitar / Unosat and NOAA. (Areas have been simplified.) Use mousewheel, buttons, or double-click to zoom; drag and drop to pan. Hover over districts to view flood data. Use buttons at lower left to show/hide layers. View large version

The river routinely floods surrounding areas during the July-September monsoon season, when moisture-laden winds sweep in from the Indian Ocean and bring rain along its length, from its Himalayan headwaters on down to the coastal plain. As with the Nile, the flooding has a good side, because the waters drop nutrient-rich sediment to replenish farmland, and some degree of flooding is essential for rice cultivation. But some years, the flooding runs out of control, and low-lying Bangladesh gets hit hardest. In 1998, 70 percent of the country went underwater, taking out crops, roads and buildings, and killing many people. Other serious floods came in 2007 and 2010. In September 2020 the worst flooding since 1998 was still underway , with a third of Bangladesh inundated, and 3 million people rendered homeless.

Higher temperatures drive more evaporation of ocean waters, and in this region that water ends up as rainfall on land during the monsoon. As a result, most scientists think that warming climate will intensify the monsoon rains in coming decades, and in turn increase seasonal flooding. The question is, how much more often might big floods happen in the future?

The authors of the new study first looked at records from a river-flow gauge in northern Bangladesh. This showed a median discharge some 41,000 cubic meters per second from 1956 to 1986, and 43,000 from 1987 to 2004. (In the big flood year of 1998, peak discharge more than doubled.)

They then looked at data from the rings of ancient trees that researchers sampled at 28 sites in Tibet, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan, at sites within the Brahmaputra watershed, or close enough to be affected by the same weather systems. Most samples were taken from conifer species in the last 20 years by scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Tree Ring Lab, led by study coauthor Edward Cook. Since people have long been cutting down trees in populous areas, Cook and his colleagues sometimes hiked for weeks to reach undisturbed sites in remote, mountainous terrain. Straw-width samples were bored from trunks, without damage to the trees. The oldest tree they found, a Tibetan juniper, dated to the year 449.

Back at the lab, they analyzed the tree rings, which grow wider in years when soil moisture is high, and thus indirectly reflect rainfall and resulting river runoff. This allowed the scientists to assemble a 696-year chronology, running from 1309 to 2004. By comparing the rings with modern instrumental records as well as historical records going back to the 1780s, they could see that the widest rings lined up neatly with known major flood years. This in turn allowed them to extrapolate yearly river discharge in the centuries preceding modern records. They found that 1956-1986 was in only the 13th percentile for river discharge, and 1987-2004 in the 22nd.

This, they say, means that anyone using the modern discharge record to estimate future flood hazard would be underestimating the danger by 24 to 38 percent, based solely on natural variations; human driven warming would have to be added on top of that. “If the instruments say we should expect flooding toward the end of the century to come about every four and a half years, we are saying we should really expect flooding to come about every three years,” said Rao.

The tree rings do show some other relatively dry times, in the 1400s, 1600s and 1800s. But they also show very wet periods of extreme flooding with no analog in the relatively brief modern instrumental period. The worst lasted from about 1560-1600, 1750-1800 and 1830-1860.

Climate change will almost certainly affect the flow of other major rivers in the region, though not necessarily in the same ways. The mighty Ganga, flowing mainly through India, is also powered mainly by the monsoon, so it will likely behave much like the Brahmaputra. But the Indus, which flows through Tibet, India and Pakistan, derives most of its flow not from the monsoon, but rather from the winter buildup of snow and ice in Himalayan glaciers, and subsequent melting in summer. In 2018 Rao and colleagues published a tree-ring study showing that the river’s flow has been anomalously high in recent years. They suggest that as climate warms and the glaciers undergo accelerated melting, the Indus will supply plenty of needed irrigation water—but at some point, when the glaciers lose enough mass, the seasonal spigot will turn the other way, and there may not be enough water.

Human vulnerability to floods along the Brahmaputra has increased in recent years due not only to sheer water volume, but because population and infrastructure  are growing fast. On the other hand, accurate flood warnings have become more advanced, and this has helped many villages reduce economic and social losses. “High discharges will continue to be associated with an increased likelihood of flood hazard in the future,” write the study authors. But, they say, this could be counteracted to some extent by “potential changes in policy, land use, or infrastructure that may ameliorate flood risk.”

The study was also coauthored by Benjamin Cook, Rosanne D’Arrigo, Brendan Buckley and Daniel Bishop, all affiliated with the Lamont-Doherty Tree Ring Lab; Upmanu Lall of the Columbia Water Center; Columbia University ecologist Maria Uriarte; and collaborators at other U.S. universities and in Australia and China.

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• Published: 05 January 2015

Flood risk of natural and embanked landscapes on the Ganges–Brahmaputra tidal delta plain

• L. W. Auerbach 1 ,
• S. L. Goodbred Jr 1 ,
• D. R. Mondal 2 ,
• C. A. Wilson 1 ,
• K. R. Ahmed 3 ,
• M. S. Steckler 4 ,
• C. Small 4 ,
• J. M. Gilligan 1 &
• B. A. Ackerly 5  

Nature Climate Change volume  5 ,  pages 153–157 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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• Climate-change mitigation
• Environmental sciences
• Geomorphology

The Ganges–Brahmaputra river delta, with 170 million people and a vast, low-lying coastal plain, is perceived to be at great risk of increased flooding and submergence from sea-level rise 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . However, human alteration of the landscape can create similar risks to sea-level rise. Here, we report that islands in southwest Bangladesh, enclosed by embankments in the 1960s, have lost 1.0–1.5 m of elevation, whereas the neighbouring Sundarban mangrove forest has remained comparatively stable 6 , 7 , 8 . We attribute this elevation loss to interruption of sedimentation inside the embankments, combined with accelerated compaction, removal of forest biomass, and a regionally increased tidal range. One major consequence of this elevation loss occurred in 2009 when the embankments of several large islands failed during Cyclone Aila, leaving large areas of land tidally inundated for up to two years until embankments were repaired. Despite sustained human suffering during this time 9 , 10 , the newly reconnected landscape received tens of centimetres of tidally deposited sediment, equivalent to decades’ worth of normal sedimentation. Although many areas still lie well below mean high water and remain at risk of severe flooding, we conclude that elevation recovery may be possible through controlled embankment breaches.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Datta, B. Kumar, S. Hossain, Md R. Karim and F. Akter for their assistance with field data collection. As noted Figs  1 , 3c , and Supplementary Fig. 8 include copyrighted material of DigitalGlobe, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Figure 3a, b includes Landsat imagery distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), located at USGS/EROS, Sioux Falls, South Dakota ( http://lpdaac.usgs.gov ). This research was financially supported by grants from the Office of Naval Research (N00014-11-1-0683) and National Science Foundation–Belmont Forum (No. 1342946). This paper is a contribution to the ICSU 2015 Sustainable Deltas Initiative.

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L. W. Auerbach, S. L. Goodbred Jr, C. A. Wilson & J. M. Gilligan

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Queens College—City University of New York, Queens, New York 11367, USA

D. R. Mondal

Environmental Science Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna 9208 Bangladesh,

K. R. Ahmed & K. Roy

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964, USA

M. S. Steckler & C. Small

Department of Political Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203, USA

B. A. Ackerly

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All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. L.W.A., S.L.G.Jr, M.S.S. and D.R.M. designed the field project. L.W.A., S.L.G.Jr, D.R.M., C.A.W., K.R.A. and K.R. collected data. L.W.A., S.L.G.Jr, D.R.M., C.A.W., M.S.S. and C.S. processed and analysed data. L.W.A., S.L.G.Jr, C.A.W. and J.M.G. wrote the manuscript. L.W.A., S.L.G.Jr, D.R.M., M.S.S. and C.A.W. wrote the Supplementary Information . All authors discussed the results and implications and commented on the manuscript at all stages.

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Auerbach, L., Goodbred Jr, S., Mondal, D. et al. Flood risk of natural and embanked landscapes on the Ganges–Brahmaputra tidal delta plain. Nature Clim Change 5 , 153–157 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2472

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2472

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Ancient tree rings shed light on Brahmaputra’s flood risk

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• Scientists warn of underestimating the flood hazard of Brahmaputra by 24 to 38 percent, based solely on natural variations. This means destructive floods will probably be more frequent than scientists have thought.
• The concerns come amid reports of China’s and India’s plans to build large-scale hydropower projects on the river.
• Improved data sharing on Brahmaputra’s discharge is needed between China, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal.

Reconstruction of 700 years of the Brahmaputra river’s water flow in the monsoon season, based on tree-ring data, suggests that the transboundary river’s real flood risk is likely an underestimate as instrumental records were taken during a dry period, scientists warn in a study .

They call for improved data sharing between the basin states China, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal. The study comes amid reports of China’s and India’s plans to build large-scale hydropower projects on the river.

Many researchers agree that a warming climate will intensify the seasonal monsoon rains that drive the Brahmaputra, but the presumed baseline of previous natural variations in river flow rests mainly on discharge-gauge records dating only to the 1950s. However, data from rings of ancient trees in 28 different sites in Tibet, Myanmar, Nepal, and Bhutan in the Brahmaputra River watershed reveal that most recent decades of discharge (1956–1986) are among the driest of the past 700 years.

“That should be of concern to us because, in the present day, high discharge years are usually associated with flooding. So this means that we are likely underestimating the true flood risk in the river as we have only taken records during a dry period,” study’s lead author Mukund Palat Rao, Tree Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, told Mongabay-India.

Anyone using the modern discharge record to estimate future flood hazards would be underestimating the danger by 24 to 38 percent, based solely on natural variations; human-driven warming would have to be added on top of that.

“If the instruments say we should expect flooding toward the end of the century to come about every four and a half years, we are saying we should really expect flooding to come about every three years,” said Rao. Discharge is the volume of water moving down a stream or river per unit of time.

The rings show that there have been much wetter periods in the past, driven by natural oscillations that took place over decades or centuries. The researchers found a good match for a high discharge in the year 1787 C.E. “We know from historical documents that there was a major flood in 1787 C.E. that caused the Teesta river to change its course eastward from flowing into the Ganga to the Brahmatpura instead. It was unclear if this shift was earthquake driven or monsoon driven,” Rao said.

“Obviously, we can’t say for sure, but our results suggest that 1787 was a very wet year. Though there still could have been an earthquake,” said Rao.

The study only talks about flood hazards, one of the three components of flood risk in terms of adaptation. Vulnerability and exposure are the other two. “In terms of policymaking, we can still reduce flood risk by reducing our vulnerability and exposure. So we need to continue to assess mitigation structures, e.g., embankments, polders, etc. to make sure they can withstand flooding both right now and into the future. Continuing to advance our early warning capabilities and flood action plans would serve us well,” said Rao.

This study’s primary motivation was to develop a longer discharge record to better understand the natural variability and high and low flow cycles seen in this river system. The researchers turned to dendrochronology — dating and interpreting past events based on tree rings.

As trees grow they incorporate information about the environmental conditions they are living in, in their annual growth rings. Trees in the region grow more and put on wide rings in wet monsoon years. Conversely, in dry monsoon years (or droughts) they grow less and put on narrow rings.

“Since some of these trees can live for a long time, by taking a small pencil thin tree-core from these trees and measuring their rings under a microscope, we can learn more about climate conditions for the past several centuries. These cores that we take are small and do not injure or harm the trees,” added Rao.

Chandan Mahanta, professor and head of the Civil Engineering Department at IIT-Guwahati who was not involved in the study agreed that longer observation records would help overcome the current constraints of making robust baseline estimation of natural climate variability in hydro-climatologically complex river basins like the Brahmaputra.

“Focus only upon recent observation will be inadequate for accurate assessment of flood risk. Since long observation records from the past are not adequately available, alternative attempts are needed for synthetically generating reliable data,” Mahanta said. However, seven-century tree ring reconstruction of monsoon discharge alone may not provide an equally reliable database as that of instrumental measurement. “Such data is of best use if it can be integrated with data generated by other simulation tools for a collective agreement,” he added.

Shahjahan Mondal, professor and Director of the Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM) at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), who was not involved in the study, underscored the significance of data sharing by basin states. “This will help not only flood and erosion management but also water management during the dry season,” Mondal told Mongabay-India.

Flowing under a variety of names and braided routes some 2,900 miles through Tibet, northeast India, and Bangladesh, the river, often described as a “moving ocean”, contributes nearly half of the approximate 40,000 m3/s (cubic metre per second) mean annual discharge of the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna river system.

This makes it the joint third largest river system globally (tied with the Río Orinoco, Venezuela) in terms of its mean annual discharge after the Amazon and Congo. Known as the Jamuna in Bangladesh, the high discharge rates of the Brahmaputra are caused, in part, by annual precipitation (rain and seasonal snow) over 3000 mm/year for much of the watershed.

Its basin in India is shared by six states: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and West Bengal. Majuli Island, the largest inhabited river island, is located in the Brahmaputra in upper Assam. The floods in the Brahmaputra valley are a recurring phenomenon and have been causing large scale devastations every year. However, the erosion by the Brahmaputra is more dangerous than floods. As with the Nile, the flooding has a good side because the waters drop nutrient-rich sediment to replenish farmland, and some degree of flooding is essential for rice cultivation.

Read more: Wildlife and people work together during Assam’s annual tryst with floods

Better data sharing between the basin states China, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal is essential, especially since the larger upstream countries (China and India) have more control over the water resources (particularly in the context of Bangladesh).

According to reports , in November 2020, China announced plans to develop nearly 60 GW of hydropower in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo (the Brahmaputra in India) amid apprehensions of diversion of water from the river to irrigate drier regions in northwest China. This was followed by reports of India’s announcement on December 1, 2020, to build a 10 GW on the Siang (the stretch of the Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh).

Rao told Mongabay-India that the project may not have such a large impact on wet/monsoon season flows because most of the precipitation originates south of the Himalayas. But any diversion of flow would negatively impact dry season flow which is derived from snow and glacial melt (from the Tibetan Plateau).

A reduction in dry season flow by a dam would raise water security concerns (not so much of an issue in the wet season) and concerns about saltwater intrusion in the low-lying Sundarbans delta, where a high river discharge rate holds back the ocean’s saline waters. This is again a concern only in the dry season when flow levels are lower, he added.

An additional layer of worry is associated with dams triggering loss of sediment. The river has one of the highest sediment loads in the world. These sediments are crucial to sustaining the floodplain’s fertility (for agriculture) and maintaining the large riverine islands (chars). “Dams inevitably trap sediments and reduce their load. In the long run, this could threaten the integrity of chars (sandbars or small sandy islands), many of which are currently inhabited. On the Indian side in Assam, this also could interact with regional politics as there is already a lot of discrimination faced by communities who live on chars in Assam,” said Rao.

The region is active tectonically (earthquakes) and the Brahmaputra is a highly braided river that migrates its course quite often. Both of these are other large risk factors in addition to flood concerns. “The flood and river management measures adopted so far in the valley are area-specific and mostly of short-term structural measures such as the construction of embankments, permeable and impermeable spurs, revetments, etc. The poor maintenance of the flood management structures generally causes unexpected miseries to the people in their failure,” said Rao.

“The efficacy of these measures, especially in the Brahmaputra river system, which is highly aggrading/degrading in different reaches, is also debatable. As such, there is a need for constructing storage reservoirs in combination with other structural/non-structural measures after studying the river behavior using scientific tools,” he added.

Banner image: Aerial view of the heavily braided Brahmaputra river. Photo by Ashwin Kumar/Wikimedia Commons.

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Flood Management in Assam, INDIA: a Review of Brahmaputra Floods, 2012

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• Extended-Range Probabilistic Forecasts of Ganges and Brahmaputra Floods in Bangladesh EXTENDED-RANGE PROBABILISTIC FORECASTS OF GANGES AND BRAHMAPUTRA FLOODS IN BANGLADESH BY PETER J. WEBSTER , JUN JIAN , THOMAS M. HO P SON , CARLOS D. HOYOS , PAULA A. AGU D ELO , HAI -RU CHANG , JU D ITH A. CURRY , ROBERT L. GROSSMAN , TIMOTHY N. PALMER , AN D A. R. SUBBIAH A new ensemble flood prediction scheme, with skill to 10 to 15 days, allowed people along the Brahmaputra to evacuate well in advance of floods in 2007/08. any of the largest rivers on the planet emanate from the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas (Fig. 1a), fed by glacial and snow M melting and monsoon rainfall. Nearly 25% of the global popu- lation reside in the vast agrarian societies in the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Irrawaddy, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Indus river basins, each of which is subject to periods of widespread and long-lived flooding. Flooding remains the greatest cause of death and destruc- tion in the developing world, leading to catastrophic loss of life and property. While almost every government in Asia has made substantial progress over the past two decades in saving the lives of victims of slow-onset flood disasters, such events remain relentlessly impoverishing. In India alone, an average 6 million hectares (ha) of land (approximately equivalent to the size of Texas) is inundated each year, affecting 35–40 million people (Dhar and Nandargi 2000; CWC 2008). Because the flooding occurs in the fertile flood plains of major rivers, the loss in agricultural inputs (seed, fertilizer, and pesticides) alone costs in excess of 1 billion U.S. dollars (USD; hence- forth all costs will be given in USD) in an average flood or drought event. [Show full text]
• Brahmaputra and the Socio-Economic Life of People of Assam Brahmaputra and the Socio-Economic Life of People of Assam Authors Dr. Purusottam Nayak Professor of Economics North-Eastern Hill University Shillong, Meghalaya, PIN – 793 022 Email: [email protected] Phone: +91-9436111308 & Dr. Bhagirathi Panda Professor of Economics North-Eastern Hill University Shillong, Meghalaya, PIN – 793 022 Email: [email protected] Phone: +91-9436117613 CONTENTS 1. Introduction and the Need for the Study 1.1 Objectives of the Study 1.2 Methodology and Data Sources 2. Assam and Its Economy 2.1 Socio-Demographic Features 2.2 Economic Features 3. The River Brahmaputra 4. Literature Review 5. Findings Based on Secondary Data 5.1 Positive Impact on Livelihood 5.2 Positive Impact on Infrastructure 5.2.1 Water Transport 5.2.2 Power 5.3 Tourism 5.4 Fishery 5.5 Negative Impact on Livelihood and Infrastructure 5.6 The Economy of Char Areas 5.6.1 Demographic Profile of Char Areas 5.6.2 Vicious Circle of Poverty in Char Areas 6. Micro Situation through Case Studies of Regions and Individuals 6.1 Majuli 6.1.1 A Case Study of Majuli River Island 6.1.2 Individual Case Studies in Majuli 6.1.3 Lessons from the Cases from Majuli 6.1.4 Economics of Ferry Business in Majuli Ghats 6.2 Dhubri 6.2.1 A Case Study of Dhubri 6.2.2 Individual Case Studies in Dhubri 6.2.3 Lessons from the Cases in Dhubri 6.3 Guwahati 6.3.1 A Case of Rani Chapari Island 6.3.2 Individual Case Study in Bhattapara 7. [Show full text]
• Climate Change in the Brahmaputra Valley and Impact on Rice and Tea Productivity CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE BRAHMAPUTRA VALLEY AND IMPACT ON RICE AND TEA PRODUCTIVITY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Rajib Lochan Deka CENTRE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GUWAHATI GUWAHATI–781039, ASSAM, INDIA MARCH, 2013 INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHONOLOGY GUWAHATI Centre for the Environment Guwahati –781039 Assam India CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the thesis entitled “ Climate Change in the Brahmaputra Valley and Impact on Rice and Tea Productivity ” submitted by Mr. Rajib Lochan Deka to the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy is a record of bonafide research work carried out by him under our supervision and guidance. Mr. Deka has carried out research on the topic at the Centre for the Environment of IIT Guwahati over a period of three years and eight months and the thesis, in our opinion, is worthy of consideration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in accordance with the regulations of this Institute. The results contained in this thesis have not been submitted elsewhere in part or full for the award of any degree or diploma to the best of our knowledge and belief. Mrinal Kanti Dutta Chandan Mahanta Associate Professor Professor Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Civil Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Guwahati-781 039, Assam, India Guwahati-781 039, Assam, India TH-1188_0865206 INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHONOLOGY GUWAHATI Centre for the Environment Guwahati –781039 Assam India STATEMENT I do hereby declare that the matter embodied in the thesis is a result of research work carried out by me in the Centre for the Environment, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, India. [Show full text]
• Download File ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19795-6 OPEN Seven centuries of reconstructed Brahmaputra River discharge demonstrate underestimated high discharge and flood hazard frequency ✉ Mukund P. Rao 1,2 , Edward R. Cook1, Benjamin I. Cook3,4, Rosanne D. D’Arrigo1, Jonathan G. Palmer 5, Upmanu Lall6, Connie A. Woodhouse 7, Brendan M. Buckley1, Maria Uriarte 8, Daniel A. Bishop 1,2, Jun Jian 9 & Peter J. Webster10 1234567890():,; The lower Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh and Northeast India often floods during the monsoon season, with catastrophic consequences for people throughout the region. While most climate models predict an intensified monsoon and increase in flood risk with warming, robust baseline estimates of natural climate variability in the basin are limited by the short observational record. Here we use a new seven-century (1309–2004 C.E) tree-ring recon- struction of monsoon season Brahmaputra discharge to demonstrate that the early instru- mental period (1956–1986 C.E.) ranks amongst the driest of the past seven centuries (13th percentile). Further, flood hazard inferred from the recurrence frequency of high discharge years is severely underestimated by 24–38% in the instrumental record compared to pre- vious centuries and climate model projections. A focus on only recent observations will therefore be insufficient to accurately characterise flood hazard risk in the region, both in the context of natural variability and climate change. 1 Tree Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA. 2 Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. 3 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. [Show full text]
• Multiscale Analysis of Three Consecutive Years of Anomalous Flooding in Pakistan Multiscale analysis of three consecutive years of anomalous flooding in Pakistan By K. L. Rasmussen1+, A. J. Hill*, V. E. Toma#, M. D. Zuluaga+, P. J. Webster#, and R. A. Houze, Jr.+ +Department of Atmospheric Sciences University of Washington Seattle, WA *Atmospheric Science Group Department of Geosciences Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX #School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA Submitted to the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society January 2014 Revised April 2014 Revised June 2014 1 Corresponding author: Kristen Lani Rasmussen, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Box 351640, Seattle, WA 98195 E-mail address: [email protected] ABSTRACT A multiscale investigation into three years of anomalous floods in Pakistan provides insight into their formation, unifying meteorological characteristics, mesoscale storm structures, and predictability. Striking similarities between all three floods existed from planetary and large- scale synoptic conditions down to the mesoscale storm structures, and these patterns were generally well-captured with the ECMWF EPS forecast system. Atmospheric blocking events associated with high geopotential heights and surface temperatures over Eastern Europe were present during all three floods. Quasi-stationary synoptic conditions over the Tibetan plateau allowed for the formation of anomalous easterly midlevel flow across central India into Pakistan that advected deep tropospheric moisture from the Bay of Bengal into Pakistan, enabling flooding in the region. The TRMM Precipitation Radar observations show that the flood- producing storms exhibited climatologically unusual structures during all three floods in Pakistan. These departures from the climatology consisted of westward propagating precipitating systems with embedded wide convective cores, rarely seen in this region, that likely occurred when convection was organized upscale by the easterly midlevel jet across the subcontinent. [Show full text]
• Spatial and Seasonal Responses of Precipitation in the Ganges And South Dakota State University Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications Department of Natural Resource Management 1-28-2015 Spatial and Seasonal Responses of Precipitation in the Ganges and Brahmaputra River Basins to ENSO and Indian Ocean Dipole Modes: Implications for Flooding and Drought M. S. Pervez G. M. Henebry South Dakota State University Follow this and additional works at: http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/nrm_pubs Part of the Geographic Information Sciences Commons, Physical and Environmental Geography Commons, and the Spatial Science Commons Recommended Citation Pervez, M. S. and Henebry, G. M., "Spatial and Seasonal Responses of Precipitation in the Ganges and Brahmaputra River Basins to ENSO and Indian Ocean Dipole Modes: Implications for Flooding and Drought" (2015). Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications. 5. http://openprairie.sdstate.edu/nrm_pubs/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Natural Resource Management at Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Open PRAIRIE: Open Public Research Access Institutional Repository and Information Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected] . Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 147–162, 2015 www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/15/147/2015/ doi:10.5194/nhess-15-147-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Spatial and seasonal responses of precipitation in the Ganges and Brahmaputra river basins to ENSO and Indian Ocean dipole modes: implications for flooding and drought M. [Show full text]
• Water Resources in the Northeast BACKGROUND PAPER NO. 2 AUGUST 2006 WATER RESOURCES IN THE NORTHEAST: STATE OF THE KNOWLEDGE BASE BY CHANDAN MAHANTA INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, GUWAHATI, INDIA This paper was commissioned as an input to the study “Development and Growth in Northeast India: The Natural Resources, Water, and Environment Nexus” Table of contents 1. Background..........................................................................................................................................1 2. Context .................................................................................................................................................1 3. Present status of knowledge base.....................................................................................................1 4. Characteristics of the water resources of the Northeast................................................................3 4.1 General features............................................................................................................................3 4.2 Brahmaputra basin.......................................................................................................................4 4.3 Barak basin ....................................................................................................................................7 5. Water resource availability in major water bodies ........................................................................7 6. Groundwater resources .....................................................................................................................7 [Show full text]
• Attributing the 2017 Bangladesh Floods From Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 1409–1429, 2019 https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-1409-2019 © Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Attributing the 2017 Bangladesh floods from meteorological and hydrological perspectives Sjoukje Philip1, Sarah Sparrow2, Sarah F. Kew1, Karin van der Wiel1, Niko Wanders3,4, Roop Singh5, Ahmadul Hassan5, Khaled Mohammed2, Hammad Javid2,6, Karsten Haustein6, Friederike E. L. Otto6, Feyera Hirpa7, Ruksana H. Rimi6, A. K. M. Saiful Islam8, David C. H. Wallom2, and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh1 1Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, the Netherlands 2Oxford e-Research Centre, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 3Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands 4Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA 5Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, The Hague, the Netherlands 6Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK 7School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 8Institute of Water and Flood Management, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh Correspondence: Sjoukje Philip ( [email protected] ) and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh ( [email protected] ) Received: 10 July 2018 – Discussion started: 23 July 2018 Revised: 14 February 2019 – Accepted: 14 February 2019 – Published: 13 March 2019 Abstract. In August 2017 Bangladesh faced one of its worst change in discharge towards higher values is somewhat less river flooding events in recent history. This paper presents, uncertain than in precipitation, but the 95 % confidence inter- for the first time, an attribution of this precipitation-induced vals still encompass no change in risk. [Show full text]
• District Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan District Disaster Preparedness and Response Plan (2019) Name of the District: Majuli (ASSAM) Telephone: +91-03775-274424 Fax: +91-03775-274475, E-Mail: [email protected] Prepared by :- District Administration. 1 Table of Contents Foreword .......................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ............................................................................................. 3 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 5 1.1 Background………………………………………………………………….. 5 1.2 Importance of multi hazard management plan…………………… 7 1.3 The main features of multi hazard plan……………………………….. 7 1.4 Disaster Management Cycle………………………………………. 7 1.5 Pre Disaster or Risk Management Phase……………………….. 8 1.6 Post- Disaster or Crisis Management Phase………………………… 8 1.7 Objective of the plan………………………………………….. 8 2.1 Majuli- Administrative Profile .................................................................... 8 2.2 Disasters.................................................................................................... 9 2.3 Flood ................................................................................................... 9 2.4 Erosion ................................................................................................ 11 2.5 Earth-Quake ...................................................................................... 14 2.6 Cyclone ............................................................................................ [Show full text]
• Comparative Physiography of the Lower Ganges and Lower Mississippi Valleys Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1955 Comparative Physiography of the Lower Ganges and Lower Mississippi Valleys. S. Ali ibne hamid Rizvi Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Rizvi, S. Ali ibne hamid, "Comparative Physiography of the Lower Ganges and Lower Mississippi Valleys." (1955). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 109. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/109 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected] . COMPARATIVE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE LOWER GANGES AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Geography ^ by 9. Ali IJt**Hr Rizvi B*. A., Muslim University, l9Mf M. A*, Muslim University, 191*6 M. A., Muslim University, 191*6 May, 1955 EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT Candidate: ^ A li X. H. R iz v i Major Field: G eography Title of Thesis: Comparison Between Lower Mississippi and Lower Ganges* Brahmaputra Valleys Approved: Major Prj for And Chairman Dean of Gri ualc School EXAMINING COMMITTEE: 2m ----------- - m t o R ^ / q Date of Examination: ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author wishes to tender his sincere gratitude to Dr. Richard J. Russell for his direction and supervision of the work at every stage; to Dr. [Show full text]
• Situation Analysis on Climate Change Situation Analysis on Climate Change INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR CONSERVATION OF NATURE Asia Regional Office 63 Sukhumvit Soi 39 Bangkok 10110, Thailand Tel: +66 2 662 4029 Fax: +66 2 662 4389 www.iucn.org/asia Bangladesh Country Office House 16, Road 2/3, Banani Dhaka 1213, Bangladesh Tel: +8802 9890423 Fax: +8802 9892854 www.iucn.org/bangladesh India Country Office 2nd Floor, 20 Anand Lok, August Kranti Marg, New Delhi 110049, India Tel/Fax: +91 11 4605 2583 www.iucn.org/india DIALOGUE FOR SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF TRANS-BOUNDARY WATER REGIMES IN SOUTH ASIA Ecosystems for Life • Inland Navigation 1 Situation Analysis on Climate Change K Shreelakshmi Chandan Mahanta Nandan Mukherjee and Malik Fida Abdullah Khan Nityananda Chakravorty Ecosystems for Life: A Bangladesh-India Initiative Ecosystems for Life • Inland Navigation 1 The designation of geographical entities in this book, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IUCN concerning the legal status of any country, territory, administration, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The views expressed in this publication are authors’ personal views and do not necessarily reflect those of IUCN. This initiative is supported by the Minister for European Affairs and International Cooperation, the Netherlands. Published by: IUCN Asia Regional Office; IUCN Bangladesh Country Office; IUCN India Country Office; IUCN Gland, Switzerland Copyright: © 2012 IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Reproduction of this publication for educational or other non-commercial purposes is authorized without prior written permission from the copyright holder provided the source is fully acknowledged. [Show full text]
• A Review of Atmospheric and Land Surface Processes with Emphasis on flood Generation in the Southern Himalayan Rivers Science of the Total Environment 556 (2016) 98–115 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Science of the Total Environment journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenv Review A review of atmospheric and land surface processes with emphasis on flood generation in the Southern Himalayan rivers A.P. Dimri a,⁎, R.J. Thayyen b, K. Kibler c,A.Stantond, S.K. Jain b,D.Tullosd, V.P. Singh e a School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India b National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India c University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA d Water Resources Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA e Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, and Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA HIGHLIGHTS • Floods in the southern rim of the Indian Himalayas are a major cause of loss of life, property, crops, infrastructure, etc. • In the recent decade extreme precipitation events have led to numerous flash floods in and around the Himalayan region. Sporadic case-based studies have tried to explain the mechanisms causing the floods. • However, in some of the cases, the causative mechanisms have been elusive. • The present study provides an overview of mechanisms that lead to floods in and around the southern rim of the Indian Himalayas. article info abstract Article history: Floods in the southern rim of the Indian Himalayas are a major cause of loss of life, property, crops, infrastructure, Received 9 January 2016 etc. They have long term socio-economic impacts on the habitat living along/across the Himalayas. In the recent Received in revised form 29 February 2016 decade extreme precipitation events have led to numerous flash floods in and around the Himalayan region. [Show full text]

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An early warning system for urban fluvial floods based on rainfall depth–duration thresholds and a predefined library of flood event scenarios: a case study of palermo (italy).

1. Introduction

• Risk knowledge through the identification of hazards, exposures, and vulnerability;
• Forecasting and monitoring of hydro-meteorological variables, such as water stage, flow velocity, and rainfall and data processing using computational models;
• Dissemination and communication of alerts;
• Reaction to the alerts issued.
• Acquiring the NMB and the associated maximum expected cumulative depth and accumulation period from the QPF to derive the expected rainfall trajectory;
• Retrieving the water stage at the OPP station at the time of issuing of the NMB, assessing Q 0 , and identifying 1 out of 10 possible reference families of iso-critical discharge DDT curves ( Q init,DDT );
• Deriving the expected hydrograph peak flow from the DDTs ( Q peak,DDT ) based on the rainfall trajectory (point 1) and the selected reference family of DDT curves (point 2);
• Associating Q 0 (point 2) with one out of four possible initial discharge conditions ( Q init,FES ) considered for the generation of the FES library;
• Associating Q peak,DDT (point 3) with 1 of the 19 possible peak values ( Q peak,FES ) considered for the generation of the FES library;
• Retrieving from the library the expected FES associated with the paired Q init,FES − Q peak,FES values.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. study area: the city of palermo and the oreto river basin, 2.1.1. flow rating and flow duration curves at opp, 2.1.2. characterization of the computational domain, 2.2. rainfall depth–duration thresholds, 2.3. flood event scenarios: definition and products.

• A report table of “critical flooding points” ( CPs ) in .cvs format, reporting the location (spatial coordinates, CP loc ) and timing ( CP time , time in hours from the beginning of the rainfall) of all points along the river, where water level begins to exceed the bankfull stage, thus triggering the flood;
• A flood map defining the flooding area extension and the maximum flood depth reached at each node of the full computational domain, classified according to the following four classes: “low” (0.05 < h < 0.50 m); “moderate” (0.50 ≤ h < 1.00 m); “high” (1.00 ≤ h < 2.00 m); “extreme” (h ≥ 2.00 m). Each flood map also displays all the CPs occurring for the associated scenario;
• Three specific hazard maps for people, vehicles, and buildings, respectively.

2.4. Architecture of the Early Warning System

2.5. generation of the pre-built library of fess.

• Hydrological study aimed to (i) derive six representative hydrographs at the ICS with different return periods (i.e., 10, 25, 50, 100, 300, and 500 years) and (ii) evaluate the scaling factor, k p , between the peak flow at the ICS and the OPP section;
• Normalization of the obtained hydrographs and estimation of a standard Unit Hydrograph (UH);
• Scaling procedure application to the standard UH in order to obtain a set of 19 design hydrographs with peak flow ( Q peak,FES ) varying from 100 to 1000 m 3 /s with steps of 50 m 3 /s;
• Hydraulic modelling to simulate the propagation of the 19 hydrographs within the computational domain under the four alternative initial conditions defined in Table 1 (i.e., Q LF , Q LM , Q MH , and Q HF );
• Derivation of the FES products defined in Section 2.3 ( Figure 4 ) from each simulation;
• Generation of the FES library, where a label, given by paired Q init,FES and Q peak,FES values, is associated with each of the 76 generated scenarios (19 Q peak,FES × 4 Q init,FES ).

2.5.1. Generation of the Design Hydrographs

2.5.2. hydraulic modelling, 3.1. analysis of the critical flooding points, 3.2. floodable areas and hazard variability across different fess, 3.3. testing the ews with a historical event, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Pumo, D.; Avanti, M.; Francipane, A.; Noto, L.V. An Early Warning System for Urban Fluvial Floods Based on Rainfall Depth–Duration Thresholds and a Predefined Library of Flood Event Scenarios: A Case Study of Palermo (Italy). Water 2024 , 16 , 2599. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16182599

Pumo D, Avanti M, Francipane A, Noto LV. An Early Warning System for Urban Fluvial Floods Based on Rainfall Depth–Duration Thresholds and a Predefined Library of Flood Event Scenarios: A Case Study of Palermo (Italy). Water . 2024; 16(18):2599. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16182599

Pumo, Dario, Marco Avanti, Antonio Francipane, and Leonardo V. Noto. 2024. "An Early Warning System for Urban Fluvial Floods Based on Rainfall Depth–Duration Thresholds and a Predefined Library of Flood Event Scenarios: A Case Study of Palermo (Italy)" Water 16, no. 18: 2599. https://doi.org/10.3390/w16182599

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Disaster Risk Governance and Response Management for Flood: A Case Study of Assam, India

• First Online: 05 August 2017

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• Indrajit Pal 4 &
• Siddharth Singh 5  

Part of the book series: Disaster Risk Reduction ((DRR))

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Flood and erosion in the State of Assam, India, is menacing and probably the most acute and unique in the country. Every year due to successive waves of floods, most of the areas in the valley of Assam remain submerged for a considerable numbers of days. Regular flooding added with persistent erosion causing land loss of thousands of hectares resulting to hundreds of people landless virtually destabilize the socio-economic development of the state. It has been observed that every year, the mighty Brahmaputra River is eroding more than 2000 ha of land. Subsequent to the National Policy for Flood in 1954 by the Government of India, flood control activities in the State of Assam started taking place. As envisaged in the National Policy for Flood, the state could take short-term as well as long-term measures for flood mitigation, but to get the immediate relief to the flood-ravaged state, construction of embankments as short-term measures had been widely adopted. In the state as a whole, the total area eroded by Brahmaputra, Barak and their tributaries since 1954 is 3.86 lakh hectares, which constitute 7% of the total area of the state.

The recurrence incidence of extensive floods takes place because of the occasional failure of the existing flood prevention structures, which have outlived their lives. Regular flooding added with unabated erosion causing land loss of thousands of hectares resulting to hundreds of people landless virtually destabilize the socio-economic development of the state. It has been observed that every year, more than 2000 ha of land is being eroded by the Brahmaputra annually.

The present study will analyse the comprehensive approach towards disaster risk reduction for effective disaster governance that is a combination of actions including mitigation activities for specific hazards. A comprehensive approach towards disaster risk reduction for effective disaster governance is a combination of actions including mitigation activities for specific hazards (Pal et al. 2013 , 2017 ). The present study highlights the flood management and response mechanisms already in existence in the State of Assam, one of the most multi-hazard-prone states in India.

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Pal, I., Singh, S. (2018). Disaster Risk Governance and Response Management for Flood: A Case Study of Assam, India. In: Pal, I., Shaw, R. (eds) Disaster Risk Governance in India and Cross Cutting Issues. Disaster Risk Reduction. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3310-0_8

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