Development of multi-hazard flood risk information system for coastal region: A consolidated end-to-end web platform for efficient flood management

Effective flood risk management is often hindered due to inadequate dissemination of flood-related information to the end-users, including vulnerable communities as well. To close this gap, global disaster groups recommend establishing efficient information channels to achieve the status of secure, resilient, and sustainable cities stipulated in UN SDGs 11 and 13. This study, for the first time, develops an information-rich web-based flood risk information system, ‘MANAGE’, for Jagatsinghpur, a highly sensitive multi-hazard coastal catchment in India. In contrast to earlier flood information systems that predominantly emphasize hazard mapping or short-term forecasting and therefore offer limited insight into local vulnerability patterns, MANAGE advances the field by providing an integrated, village-scale framework that consolidates hazard, vulnerability, and risk within a single operational platform. The comprehensive repository of flood hazards, physical and socio-economic vulnerabilities, and bivariate flood risks at the finest administrative scale is derived through a cascade of high-resolution flood modeling, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making tools, and statistical techniques. Our results show that flood risk is primarily influenced by vulnerability in evaluations encompassing both physical (69.86%) and composite indicators (a combination of physical and socio-economic) (51.6%). Conversely, when only socio-economic indicators (39.66%) are accounted for, hazard and vulnerability jointly dominate. The intricate architecture of MANAGE, with enhanced user-friendliness, along with smartphone compatibility and multilingual choices, ensures easy access to all end-users. This feature of MANAGE is invaluable in ensuring that crucial flood risk information is widely understood, promoting greater community engagement and supporting more effective disaster preparedness and response. • MANAGE: A first-of-its-kind web-based flood risk information system is developed • Flood Hazard, vulnerability, and risks derived at the finest administrative scale • Coastal stretch contains a high proportion of high and very-high flood-risk areas • MANAGE offers seamless mobile integration and multilingual features • Study proposes recommendations and policy measures for sustainable flood management