Flood damages in India – causes, data analysis, and way forward

Abstract

ABSTRACT Floods are a recurring and highly damaging disaster in India. This paper begins with a brief review on meteorological and hydrological processes relevant from a flooding perspective in India. Subsequently, flood damage data pertaining to area and population impacted and damage to crops, houses, humans, and public utilities for the past about 70 years published by the Government of India have been analyzed to determine the overall and recent trends. In recent times, the area and population impacted by floods are showing a declining trend, but damage values for houses, public utilities, and total damages are seen to be mounting. Also, small cities are new areas of flood vulnerability. Among other steps, flood management efforts should focus on further curtailing human deaths by reducing exposure, early warnings/forecasts and timely evacuation to safer areas. For exposure reduction, experience of other countries can be gainfully employed, e.g. the ‘Room for the River’ approach implemented in the Netherlands. It would also be helpful to develop a disaster database comprising time series and spatial data of relevant variables by collating efforts of related organizations. Considering the current water development scenarios and future projections of causative variables, it would be necessary to follow climate‑resilient development (CRD) pathways.