Volume 9, Issue 7, July – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology

ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

Magnitude of Urban Flood in Kolkata Municipal

Corporation and its Influencing Factors
Dibakar Dutta1*; Ramkrishna Maiti2
1
Research Scholar, 2Professor,
Department of Geography, Vidyasagar University

Abstract:- In last few decades the intensity and frequency KMC(Bose, 2007). A saucer like terrain, sluggish natural
of floods has been increasing in Kolkata Municipal drainage, cyclones, storm surges, tidal blockage of drainage
Corporation which effects economy and society to large channels cause flooding and water logging in the city.
extent. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) overviewed the Global trends of different Urban flood results in overwhelming of drainage
weather events and notes that the frequency of heavy capacity due to heavy rainfall(Rafiq et al., 2016). Mainly
precipitation events has increased over most land areas inadequate drainage system and lack of regular maintenance
(IPCC AR4 2007). In last 100 year’s rainfall data shows a are caused for the floods in urban areas(Mark et al., 2001).
cyclic pattern of rainfall intensification and high Riverine floods, coastal floods and also flash floods can be
magnitude storm which led to intensive flood in Kolkata prevalent in the urban set up but the term ‘urban flooding
Municipal Corporation. Land use change in Kolkata refers especially to the flooding that occurs when rainfall, not
Municipal Corporation and its surrounding results in only overflowing body of water- overwhelms the local storm
reduction of water holding capacity as well a drainage water drainage capacity of a densely populated urban area’
congestion to contribute waterlogging. (NRDC,2023). Urban floods have the higher capacity of
causalities and economic loss than other type of floods, as it
Keywords:- Flood Magnitude, Urban Flood, Google Earth effects urban settlements straightway(Sundaram et al., 2021).
Engine. It has been predicted that worldwide urban property loss due
to urban flood will be 712 billion dollars from 174 billion
I. INTRODUCTION dollars per year(Tazmul Islam & Meng, 2022). There are
several factors which are responsible for urban floods which
Urban flood is an emerging issue in the discussion of can be broadly divided into three categories. The categories
hazard management. Flooding is the most widespread are geomorphic factors, anthropogenic factors and climatic
weather-related hazard around the globe(C A Doswell, 2003) factors (Fig.1). Unfortunately all these factors are prevalent
which affects water management, nature and ecosystem in case of KMC which are treathening the flood condition of
services, economic activities and human health(Moothedan et this region.From the last two decade flood magnitude of
al., 2020) . 82% of world’s humans are being affected by KMC is in very outrageous situation mainly in the late
flooding phenomena , As because one third of the earth’s area monsoon period. The impacts of the urban floods will be most
is susceptible to flood prone(Kumar et al., 2021). More than relentless for those populations who are living in the eastern
two billion of people were affected by flood issues throughout edge of the city , where population growth is very high over
the world from 1998 to till now(Taromideh et al., 2022). the past few decades(Rumbach, 2017). The problems of
Almost every city of worldwide is facing flood problems in urban flooding need to be adressed by different stakeholders
different intensity and magnitude. 49.2% of the global of urban planning to fulfill the goal of sustainable urban
population resides in urban areas, So societal and financial future.
consequences of urban flooding are inevitably wide-ranging
than other hazards(Chen et al., 2009). Many Asian megacities In this paper,our aim is to identify the influencing
are also in floodplains and deltas are consequently exposed to factors of floods in the study area and the magnitude or extent
the effect of climate-related hazards, such as sea level rise, of the flood events.Natural set up of KMC region coupling
cyclones, storm surges and flooding(Colenbrander et al., with anthropogenic influence and changing climatic
2017). In India, every metropolitan like Delhi, Mumbai, phenomena triggered the flood magnitude of this region.
Chennai, Bangalore had experienced flood in the last one Remote sensing and GIS tools has been used to identifiy the
decade which are mostly devastating. The climatic disorders factors and Google Earth engine(GEE) platform has been
of Kolkata municipal corporation (KMC) specially changing used to mark out flood magnitude from 2016 to 2023 by using
rainfall patterns in recent times are creating flood problems sentinel-1 SAR images.The key benefit of this research is to
since long time. In 2007,there are 34 cases of death(De et al., identify the urban flood factors in an urban area and also it
2013) due to terrible flood in Kolkata. At least 7 to 8 heavy shows the flood affected areas and its magnitude in KMC
rainfall events per year, leading to clogging of water in many region.The findings of this study will be significantly
places across the city Kolkata. If the rainfall exceeds 15 mm beneficial for the citizens and the policy makers for flood-
per hour then it became beyond the draining capacity of proof urban planning and management.

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Volume 9, Issue 7, July – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

Fig 1: Responsible Factors for Urban Flood

II. STUDY AREA also impacted by severe flood by several time. Some basic
information about the study area is given below(Table1.)
Kolkata Municipal Corporation(Fig 2.) has chosen as
our study area because it has an complex urban setting and

Table 1: Study Area Information

Location Along the eastern banks of the River Hooghly in a N-S direction
Geographical location 22.5625°N and 88.3531°E
Total Area 206.1km2
Elevation Between 1.5m and 15m above MSL
Slope 0o- 2o
Climate type Tropical wet-and-dry climate and Aw type under the Köppen climate classification
Maximum temperature 40 °C (104 °F)
Minimum temperature 9–11 °C (48–52 °F)
Average rainfall 1400-1600 mm per year
Total Population more than 4.5 million
Floating Poupulation 60,00,000 per day
Population density 24,252 per sq. km
No. of wards 144
No. of borough 16
Total Length of Sewer Lines brick sewer length 200 km and piped sewer length about 1784 km
Total Length of Open Drains 953 km.
Total slum population 1,409,721 Persons

Kolkata is an unplanned city which has started to evolve is Being the 7th most populous city of india, facing various
during 17th century.To accommodate the influx of population, hydrometeorological issues from the last two decades. These
kolkata has gradually grown(Singh et al., 2015) but from the hydrometeorological issues like flood will be threatfull to the
last three decade it faced an explosive population growth. citizen of the city in near future as the city lacking space for
Due to this rapid growth, the city is experiencing swift the retention of excessive surface water.
conversion of land use and land cover characteristics. Kolkata

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Volume 9, Issue 7, July – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

Fig 2: Study Area Map

III. DATA SOURCES AND METHODS slope greater than 2o in back-slope are likely to take place as
surface water due to rise in the regional incidence
The synoptic view, repetitive coverage and real-time angle(Moothedan et al., 2020).
data acquisition by remote sensing technique making it very
useful tool in any kind of research field. All data needed data  OTSU Automatic Thresholding Method:
for this investigation were collected from secondary sources Otsu automatic thresholding method comprises iteration
mainly using remote sensing techniques. of all the possible threshold values and for the pixel levels of
each side of the threshold, a measure of spread calculation has
Google earth engine catalog has used in this research for done. In that case the pixels take place either foreground or
majority of datasets. In this study magnitude of flood has been background. The main focus is to get the threshold values
derived from the sentinel-1 Level-1 Ground Range Detection where the spreads value is minimum for the sum of
(GRD) data in google earth engine platform (GEE). There are foreground and background. The partition of data which
square pixels with few speckles effect in these images. increase maximum inter-class variance and likewise, it
Various multi-date images (pre-flood, during flood and post minimizes the sum of interclass variance. BSS/p is the
flood) have been acquired to monitor the flood events. After variance of inter-class where BSS (between-sum-of squares)
acquiring images, pre-processing steps were done which were is calculated by the below given equation:
mainly noise removal, radiometric calibration and terrain
2
correction was performed by using the sentinel-1 toolbox. 𝑝 ̅̅̅̅ 𝑘 − 𝐷𝑁
𝐵𝑆𝑆 = ∑𝑘=1(𝐷𝑁 ̅̅̅̅) (1)
The pre-processing steps are given in the methodological
flow chart (Fig.3). In this process VH-backscatter has been In this equation DN represents Digital number of VH
effectively used for flood inundation mapping. band and DN 𝑘 is the mean digital number of the total dataset.
As there are two classes in my study so p is 2 here. The
In theory, a typical bi-modal character of SAR variance structure of the dataset is described by the between-
backscatter histogram is expected an over water plenty sum-of squares (BSS).
terrain. So, automatic thresholding method based on Otsu’s
method (Bangare and Patil, 2016) has been used to separate The threshold value curtails the BSS.
land and water from the images. The topographic At the end, the calculated threshold value was assigned
characteristics of a region also influence the SAR backscatter to every case and flooded and non-flooded areas are
which caused for difficulties in images’ classification and segmented from the images via the GEE platform.
interpretation. Thus, the terrain correction was done by using
SRTM to minimize the errors. The study identified that the

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Volume 9, Issue 7, July – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

Fig 3: Methodological Flowchart

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION waterbodies of the region and the red colour is showing the
flooded area of the region. Every year during mansoon which
Over the years, KMC experienced frequent flood is mainly may to october month KMC is facing heavy rainfall.
incidents during the monsoon time.Inundation of different This rainfall lead to waterlogging in massive way which
areas almost all the wards has become very common in every causes flood in various places in the study area. In this study
monsoon. There are several factors of urban flood which have it is shown that if the rainfall reach 150 cm so the flooded area
previously discussed but the peculiar urban set up of KMC will be high. In 2017 and 2021 faced the most flooded area.
has elevated the issues of urban flood.The otsu autometic 2021 faced the most flooded area,even the rainfall is lower
thresholding method has been applied to the images from than 2017.The main reason of this incedent is that 2021 gets
2016 to 2022. At the very first maximum rainfall day has the highest rainfall in the month of september which is the
selected from IMD gridded data, then post 15 days and pre 15 peak time of mansoon.In this time all the waterbodies and
days of that day,s imagery has been selected to estimate the drainage are overwhelmed because of the middle of the
amount of flood.Presence of radar like reflecting surfaces, season. The region already got rain in the last three month
shadows and layovers are the major challenges for flood which is may, june, july.in the month of september the
mapping in urban areas(Vanama et al., 2020).So, the waterbodies and drainage has reached its highest carrying
autometic thresholding method has used on pre-flood images capacity so the high rainfall in september has failed to carry
to extract the land surfaces which lead to over estimation of excessive water. So waterbodies and drainage take important
flood area. To avoid overestimation, the land surface acquired role to retain or run out the excess water from the suffering
from pre-flood images has been masked out to identify the region which may take effective role in urban flood
flooded areas from flood images and post flood images. mitigation.It is alarming to the policy maker and flood
management team to manage the flood during late mansoon
In this study, the SAR images from 2016 to 2022 is time.This Study will give the beneficial information to assess
showing the flood effected area of KMC. It has been seen the flood hazards.
from the result that total flooded area is related with rainfall.
In these given maps the blue colour is showing the

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Volume 9, Issue 7, July – 2024 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

V. CONCLUSION by applying otsu autometic threshoding algorithm which is an

effective method for flood event analysis.Findings of this
Flood is one of the most destructive natural event that research is that SAR images has massive imortance in the
caused for massive loss in all over the world. It is assured that calibration and validation of flood inundation model.Google
optical images is an efficient tool to monitor processes on the Earth Engine(GEE), a cloud based platform has an effective
earth but it has drawbacks to keep track on floods caused by operational function for risk reduction and planning
long rainfall. In this paper, the sentinel-1 images has been purpose.At the end,this study will be helpful for flood
used to monitor flood events in KMC from 2016 to 2022.The mitigation strategies and decisions making for future flood
images have been divided into flooded and non flooded zone incedents.

Fig 4: Total Flooded Area of the Study Region from 2016 to 2022

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ISSN No:-2456-2165 https://doi.org/10.38124/ijisrt/IJISRT24JUL498

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