Development of flood susceptibility map using a GIS-based AHP approach: a novel case study on Idukki district, India

ABSTRACT

Flooding is a regular danger in the Idukki district of Kerala causing serious damage to life and property. An attempt has been undertaken in this research to identify crucial zones in the Idukki district that are more susceptible to flooding. The AHP technique was used to give relative weights to 12 flood contributing parameters. The resultant flood susceptibility map shows that 1346.4 km² of the total land in the Idukki district has a high to very high likelihood of flooding. Validation of the resultant map was achieved using the AUC-ROC approach, which showed good accuracy of 0.91.

KEYWORDS:

• Floods
• analytical hierarchy process
• susceptibility
• mapping
• remote sensing

Acknowledgements

The corresponding author is grateful to his supervisor Dr. Bharat Jhamnani, Assistant Professor, Delhi Technological University for his constant support and motivation during the research work. The author would also like to thank the laboratory staff of the Remote Sensing lab of the Delhi Technological University for their cooperation in carrying out the results for the current research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.