Assessment of urban flood vulnerability using multi-criteria decision making and geospatial techniques in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra, India

Floods are one of the most devastating natural disasters. Flood susceptibility mapping is a strategic planning method for mitigating flood risk and damage. The main aim of the present study is to map areas of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city for flood vulnerability zonation implementing Random Forest, Support Vector Machine and CART classification methods. It was observed that areas nearer to river are more susceptible to flood. The highest elevation value of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city is 725 m while aspect values ranges from 0 – 10 degree. The slope index value of city ranges from 0 – 5 degree and plan curvature values were ranges from 0 - 3. The city's central region is comparatively less vulnerable to flooding as it has a higher elevation and is situated away from river bank. Within the study area, value of distance from stream ranges from 0 to 1009.01 m and distance to road value ranges from 0 to 4621.14 m. LULC variation growth of built-up land around water bodies which might get submerged during period of water surge. Vegetation area reduces from 21.255 sq. km to 13.160 sq. km over the period of time. Topographical wetness index value observed was 0 – 16.5376 within city and RF flood susceptibility values observed were 0 – 5. The CART index values of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city varies from 0 – 5 and SVM values shows variation from 0 – 5. This study will help urban planning policy makers to detect the flood susceptible zones and for the better flood management.