Flood risk assessment of Srinagar city in Jammu and Kashmir, India

Purpose Risk assessment is imperative for disaster risk reduction (DRR). The risk is rooted to various physical, social, economic, demographic, and environmental factors that determine the probable magnitude of loss during an extreme event. By way of bringing a conceptual model into practice, this paper aims to examine the flood risk of the Srinagar city. Design/methodology/approach The ‘risk triangle’ model has been adopted in the present investigation evaluating parameters, reflective of hazard (intensity), exposure (spatial), and vulnerability (sensitivity) using Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) scene (2014/09/10), Global Positioning System (GPS), Cartosat-1 Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and socioeconomic and demographic data (Census of India, 2011). We characterize flood hazard intensity on the basis of variability in water depth during a recent event (September-2014 Kashmir Flood); spatial exposure as a function of terrain elevation, and socioeconomic structure and demographic composition of ...