Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient: A new measurement devised

  • IASbaba
  • January 5, 2021
  • 0
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Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient: A new measurement devised

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-I – Geography & GS-III – Sci & Tech

In news 

  • To understand if a coastal city is more prone to floods caused by tidal events or extreme rainfall, a team from the IIT Bombay devised a new measure called the Tide–Rainfall Flood Quotient.

Key takeaways 

  • Using the past rainfall data, tidal data, and topography of the region this framework can be applied to pinpoint the major factor at play.
  • The team selected three geographically diverse flood-prone coastal regions – Mithi Catchment in Mumbai, Jagatsinghpur District in Odisha, and Greater Chennai Corporation in Tamil Nadu to test their new metric.
  • The new method helped classify these regions into ‘storm-tide dominated’ or ‘pluvial (rainfall) dominated’ regions.
  • The metric can help disaster management experts in framing better flood risk management systems directed towards long term planning.

Do you know? 

  • The C40 Cities report of 2018 notes that by 2050, over 570 low-lying coastal cities will face projected sea level rise by at least 0.5 meters, putting over 800 million people at risk from the impacts of rising seas and storm surges.
  • While the inland areas can be flooded due to the heavy rainfall, the coasts are threatened by the impact of tidal surges.

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