UPSC Articles
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.
