Spatio-temporal analysis of areas vulnerable to urban flooding in Lahore

Metropolitan City, by using GIS and Remote Sensing techniques.

Submitted by

Muhammad Ali

1136-BH-GEOG-18 (M)

Submitted to

Dr. Shakil Mahmood

Department of Geography

Government College University, Lahore

Research Problems

One of the first tasks in designing strategies to fight urban flooding, which is becoming more
common problem in developing countries' megacities, is to identify current hotspots areas of
urban flooding. Urban flooding is an increasing hazard throughout worldwide, particularly in
Pakistan which ultimately changes into disaster. So, it needs highly attention requires for
effective management strategies. But unfortunately, Governmental Departments do not
participate in check and balance and design the preventive measures for upcoming urban
flooding. Only until the 1990s was urban flooding considered a municipal or local government
issue, but it now drew the attention of disaster and environmental researchers. Due to the high
vulnerability and risks, urban floods have earned the status of disaster. In every country, it results
in a large number of deaths and significant economic losses.

Research Questions

How to identify Spatio-temporal hotspots of urban flooding in respected urban area?

What are the problems faced during flood in urban areas?

What are the causes of urban flooding?

How urban flooding is the rapid and unplanned urbanization where surface changes the
mechanism of natural water flow?

Research Hypothesis

To identify Spatio-temporal hotspots of urban flooding, database is created by the gathering

The direct problems faced during flood in urban areas are structural damage of buildings,
damage to infrastructure and property, loss of lives or casualties, ecological loses while on the
other hand indirect problems faced are economical loses, traffic routine disturb, post-flood
recovery process, mental disturb the people.

The main causes of urban flooding are as: In Metrological factor, the flood caused by the
metrological phenomenon such as, heavy and prolong rainfall event, intense cyclone and
thunderstorms. In Hydrological factors, floods that caused by the hydrological events are snow
melting, failure of dams, river blockage and hard or impermeable surface. Anthropogenic or
human-induced are the key factor in increasing flood magnitude level, these major causes are
population growth, climate change, destruction of lakes, blockage of drains, global warming and
deforestation.

The rapid and unplanned urbanization in locations where impermeable surfaces prevent
rainwater diffusion and disrupt natural water flow is known as urban floods.

Research Objectives

The purpose of the temporal study for the urban hot-spot areas is that it shows an overall
increasing trend or alarming situation of urban flooding from the past years. The specific aims of
flood are to identify the location and future impacts of natural hazards such as floods on people,
property, and the natural environment using the best available data.

To enable local communities to have a major involvement in the design of emergency services
dealing with flood mitigation. To increase the efficiency of public administrations in promoting
public awareness and education about flood risks, consequences, and impacts by utilizing the
power of new technologies such as social media and mobile technology.

Encourage the implementation of long-term and environmentally sustainable flood mitigation

Literature Review

Flooding can cause serious impacts on cities which lead to significant impacts on people,
economy and the environment. The main objective of this research study is that to build flood-
resilient cities, flood risk specialists and planners should first evaluate flood consequences. This
research gives a current state-of-the-art literature review on flood impact assessment in urban
environments, including examples of its use and limitations. It covers both approaches for
dealing with specific types of impacts and methodologies for integrating them [ CITATION Mat05 \l
1033 ]. Identification of hotspot areas of urban flooding is one of the major steps for strategy to
mitigate urban flooding which is an emerging problem in all mega cities like Lahore. Therefore,
the aims of this research provide a framework of assessing spatio-temporal hotspots of urban
flooding areas in mega cities. For this purpose, all the information is gathering in the form of
database by the governmental departments. This data consider as secondary data. To run this
mechanism there is a need of statistical data and this data will provides us final results by the
using of Spatial Analyst toolbox in ArcGIS. At the end, temporal study shows an overall
increasing trend for incidents of urban flooding during all the past decades [CITATION Shi19 \l 1033
].

Urbanization is also consider in leading role to mitigate the urban flooding. Increases in surface
runoff, flood frequency and magnitude, and urban water harvesting capacity are all effects of
urbanisation. As a result, this study integrated multi-spectral and multi-resolution satellite
pictures with field data to conduct a quantitative assessment of the influence of urbanisation on
urban flooding in Ajman City, United Arab Emirates, for the needed period of 1975–2015.
(UAE). The results showed that the city's urban areas rose by almost 12-fold between 1975 and
2015, while the population increased by about 16-fold [CITATION AlR19 \l 1033 ]. The spatial
evolution of urban flooding events in the Athens metropolitan region, Greece, which is one
of  research articles. The study compares the locations of flood-related damages and fatalities in
Athens from 1880 to 2010 with the city's evolution to see if there have been any changes in their
spatial distribution. The information on the location and date of these flood-related incidents was
stored in a spatio-temporal database created with GIS software. Results showed that because of
gradual migration of areas due to flooding from the central to the western part of Athens and
finally to the northwestern and southern suburbs [CITATION Dia14 \l 1033 ].

Cities are being significant center of population and economic activity which are very sensitive
to various kinds of adverse events, such as flooding including both large- and small-scale
hazards, which can be caused by both natural and anthropogenic (human-induced) factors
[ CITATION Leu17 \l 1033 ] . To overcome on the urban flooding in mega cities, there is a huge need
of better understanding of the spatio-temporal patterns of public responses which plays a key-
role in reducing damage and increasing urban resilience for the cities [ CITATION Bur15 \l 1033 ].

Analyzing the spatio-temporal patterns of public responses to urban flooding in Nanjing from
July 1 to 21, 2016, using a new approach based on the merging of social media data, land use
data, and other information. Media storm tends to peak during rainstorms rather than before.
During the morning peak hours, behavioral or emotional alterations in response to the rainfall
were most noticeable [ CITATION Wan20 \l 1033 ]. User-generated content on social media about
flooding awareness like in Twitter, Facebook and Sina Weibo that represents feelings, thoughts,
discussion, and actual behavior has recently become a vital source of real-time information in
disaster research and planning [CITATION Haw15 \l 1033 ].

Every social media user can communicate and exchange information about a hazard and their
sentiments at the scene of the occurrence at the exact time the incident occurred courtesy to
information and communication technologies [ CITATION Hou15 \l 1033 ]. Spatial reference data
can be retrieved from spatial coordinates (longitudes and latitudes), social media user profiles
(registered addresses, usually at the city level), and text content (Huang and Wang, 2016).

The combination of social media data with traditional data such as land use data, remote-sensing
images, and census data is projected to provide more information for useful disasters research
[ CITATION Eil16 \l 1033 ]

Volunteered geographic data was utilized to map people's reactions to the current situation and
prospective damage from severe natural disasters such as flooding [ CITATION Zou18 \l 1033 ].
Unfortunately, there is little information about the scope and consequences of urban floods,
which sometimes goes unnoticed after the disturbance [ CITATION Gal18 \l 1033 ]. Increasing
prevalence of heavy rainfall as a result of climate change has resulted in an increase in the
occurrence of urban floods and its adverse economic and human consequences [ CITATION
Cha18 \l 1033 ].

Urban Flooding in cities has the potential to drastically interrupt people's daily lives as well as
city commercial operations. Long-term, the considerable danger posed by repeated urban floods
can result in high cumulative costs due to the destruction of economic assets and livelihoods,
public service interruptions, and negative impacts on commercial activity and human
wellbeing[ CITATION UNI09 \l 1033 ].

In developing countries, unplanned urban spawn has resulted in the emergence of settlements
within river floodplains. A good example is the city of Lahore in Pakistan. Two particularly high
floods on the Ravi River in the last century wreaked havoc on Lahore City, resulting in massive
property and life losses. The researchers used HEC-RAS software to examine the existing
hydraulic capacity of the Ravi River along Lahore City in order to determine current flood
dangers [ CITATION Ati18 \l 1033 ]. By using HEC-RAS Software and LST dynamics results show
that a huge flood might be disastrous, but the planned route can safely transit a flood with a 100-
year return period while causing minimal disruption to current infrastructure. The method
utilised in the study is universally applicable to other places with similar issues [ CITATION Jav21 \l
1033 ].

The objective study on the spatial–temporal characteristics of flood disaster and evaluated the
integrated risk of flood disaster in Shanghai based on the historical flood data from 251 to 2000.
The flood calamity in Shanghai was categorized into three categories: storm surge-induced flood,
rainstorm-induced flood, and overbank flood, according to the findings [ CITATION Qua14 \l 1033 ].
Coastal cities are highly dynamic, geomorphological complex systems that respond to flooding
in a variety of different ways [ CITATION Bal12 \l 1033 ]. Flood risk assessment has been widely
studied in China since the 1950s. The basic approaches for assessing flood risk are classified into
four categories: index system-based assessment, GIS, and remote sensing and simulation method
[ CITATION Yin13 \l 1033 ].

As a result, in terms of improving flood risk management, the current research aims to assess the
spatial–temporal characteristics and evolutionary trend of flood disasters in the studied area, as
well as to assess flood disaster risk using a historical flood data-based assessment method based
on our previous research [ CITATION Liu12 \l 1033 ].
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