Flood Risk Assessment of Panchganga River (Kolhapur District, Maharashtra) Using GIS-Based Multicriteria Decision Technique

Flood hazard causes great loss to lives and properties leading to disturbance in human society. Flood is the single most hydrometeorological hazard causing substantial losses. To gain better understanding of the flood phenomena especially for planning and mitigation purposes, flood risk analysis is often required. For the present study, the middle part of Panchganga river of Kolhapur district, Maharashtra was selected. The main objective of the present study was to evaluate the potential flood risk areas of Panchganga river using GIS-based multicriteria decision analysis. The flood scenario across the Panchganga river was analysed using RADARSAT SAR data of 5 August 2005. To remove the speckle of SAR image, a median filtered technique was used. Thresholding technique was applied on RADARSAT SAR data to segregate flooded areas from non-flooded areas. Factors considered for evaluation of the flood risk analysis were flood layer, elevation, infrastructure and land use/ land cover analysis. The spatial multicriteria analysis with ranking, rating and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to compute the priority weights of each criterion. Accuracy assessment reveals that AHP is the most accurate technique to assess flood risk of Panchganga river.