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Flooding is the most recurring type of disaster and the one that affects human lives most. Mapping flood-prone areas is a crucial element of flood risk management and land use planning.
The first step towards flood risk assessment is the creation of flood hazard maps. Flood hazard mapping reveals the territories, which are susceptible to floods and includes information on location, frequency of occurrence, and severity in three scenarios: a low probability scenario, a medium probability scenario, and a high probability scenario.
The purpose of creating flood hazard maps is to analyze and communicate flood characteristics and plan the appropriate actions as part of efficient flood management. They can be used as a decision-making tool in preventing flood damages, land use planning, and providing information on floods in rescue operations.
Flood hazard maps can be used by multiple stakeholders such as city authorities, urban planners, emergency services, and residents. For public access purposes, general maps with limited information can be created, depicting only the flood extent and protection measures. For use by city managers and emergency services for decision making more detailed information is required, therefore in Geometa flood hazard map encompasses other city information such as real estate data, engineering communications, public safety data, road networks data, building developments, and much more. Thus, in Geometa, flood hazard maps are updated in real-time.
Geometa provides the ability to combine the probability of a flood event (flood hazard map) and potential adverse consequences associated with the flood to human lives, the economy, and the environment. The result of this synergy is a flood risk map.
The main purpose of flood-risk mapping is to assist local authorities and residents to develop effective methods of decreasing flood-related damage. The most effective solution is to apply preventive measures in flood-vulnerable areas, such as zoning by-laws, building codes, and subdivision regulations to control land use within the flood-prone areas. With Geometa a lot of information on flood-vulnerable areas can be collected, in order to construct possible land-use scenarios, according to municipal legislation. Territories that are susceptible to flood can be used for purposes, which are less vulnerable to damage from it, such as agriculture, recreation areas, and parking lots. With Geometa all restrictions are checked to ensure that development on this territory is permitted.
We constructed the scenario of the flood event development for one of the Russian cities:
Understanding the best and worst-case scenarios, the available and required resources will lead to successful flood risk management.
