Flood hazard assessment in Murshidabad district of West Bengal using GIS technique

Flood, a disaster is a natural calamity and sometimes maximum human intervention on the river bank leads to flood hazard. Flood is generally occurred due to the combination of hydrological and meteorological conditions over a geographical region. Murshidabad is a flood prone district in West Bengal. A frequent flood is occurred in this district which is devastating in nature causes a tremendous damage in terms of loss of life, property, damage of households, reduction of agricultural land and environment degradation. Because of heavy rain during the month of July to September, flood occurs every year in regular basis in the district. Besides this, the district is in effect of serious erosion caused by relentless and continuous changes of course of rivers Ganga/Padma, Bhagirathi and their distributaries. The present paper intends to study the flood hazard assessments in Murshidabad analyzing the rainfall data, drainage density, geomorphologic features, water level and flood frequency analysis. The thematic maps of these factors are prepared using ArcGIS-10.1and ERDAS-9.1 tools. In this study Weighted Overlay Analysis method is adopted to prepare flood hazard zonation map based on multi-criteria assessments using technology of satellite imagery and GIS. The zonation of flood hazard map is identified as moderate, high and very high vulnerable zone in the district.