A geospatial assessment of flood susceptibility in Viluppuram region of Tamil Nadu

Flood in India has become frequent and devastating in the past few years. Accurate mapping of flood zones is of need of the hour for effective flood management strategies. In this paper, multi criteria decision prototype was used for evaluating the flood susceptibility of the Viluppuram district, Tamil Nadu. Ten environmental factors namely elevation, precipitation, slope, drainage density, distance to river, normalized difference vegetation index, topographic wetness index, Land use land cover was employed to assess the flood susceptibility of the area and it was integrated into GIS. Geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) are combined to create the flood susceptibility map. The study area was classified into very high risk (0.39%), high risk (9.3%), moderate risk (72.7%) and low risk zones (17.85%). The Viluppuram region is under flood risk every year. Over the years due to salt water intrusion and urbanization has led to reduction of forest area and agriculture, this has led to annual floods. This study would help the Urban planners, local governments, NGOs and communities to intervene in flood mitigation efforts to alleviate flood-damage.