GIS based flood hazard modeling and vulnerability mapping for River Sezibwa Catchment
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Date
2019-05Author
Balikuddembe, Maviiri
Businge, Golden Francis
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Globally, large and damaging floods occur every year. Heavy floods visited Pakistan, India and China in the summer of 2010, Colombia from October to December 2010 and Australia during the austral summer 2010/11. The maximum estimated annual damage caused by river floods in one country was recorded in China in 2010, where a total loss of US$51 billion was reported. In 2010, there were nearly 2000 immediate fatalities from monsoonal flooding in Pakistan.
The Global Flood Partnership (GFP) is a global network of scientists, users, private and public organizations active in global flood risk management. They support flood risk management for large scale disasters by providing access to flood information such as early warning systems developed to predict natural disasters before these occur and work towards closing the gap between availability and use of the information.
Flooded rivers in Central Uganda such as river Sezibwa cut off access to some northern and eastern sections of the country. Like many other countries in western, central, and eastern Africa, Uganda faced severe flooding as a result of unusually heavy rains from July through September.
Due to torrential rainfall over 65 homes built near the banks of River Sezibwa in Mukono and Kayunga districts were submerged. This was after the river burst its banks due to the heavy rains being experienced in some parts of the country where floods washed away roads, sank homes and schools.
River Sezibwa presents a significant potential flood hazard to human settlement. The floods cause damage of infrastructure such as roads, both residential and commercial property and result into loss of lives.
This study involves developing GIS based flood hazard model for River Sezibwa catchment in order to facilitate flood frequency analysis and vulnerability mapping to provide estimates for flood hazard mapping for return periods of 25, 50, 100, 200, and 1000 years.
This consisted of determination of the flood discharges at different return periods and development of flood hazard maps. This was followed by scenario analysis for generation of vulnerability maps and recommendation of suitable mitigation measures.