Flood Impact Analysis using GIS : A case study for Lake Roxen and Lake Glan - Sweden

Abstract: Floods are common natural disaster occurring in most parts of the world. This results in damage to human life and deterioration of environment. There have been immense uses of technology to mitigate measures of flood disaster i.e. structurally and non-structurally. Undoubtedly, structural measures are very expensive and time consuming which involves physical work like construction of dams, reservoirs, bridges, channel improvement, river diversion and other embankments to keep floods away from people. Whereas non-structural measures is concerned with planning like flood forecasting and warning, flood plain zoning, relief and rehabilitation for reducing the risk of flood damage to keep people away from floods. Thus, non-structural measures involve analysis, planning providing spatial information on maps with high accuracy in less time. Non-structural measures can help decision maker to plan an effective emergency response towards flood disaster. A one of the good way to plan non-structural measures is to analyze impact of flood in the flood prone areas. The thesis tries to analyze impact of flood on environment along the demarcated flood prone areas of Lake Roxen and Lake Glan in Östergötland County, Sweden. The thesis also proposes how to use current flood information during flood emergency utilizing geographical information system. This provides spatial information for area in the flood zone for assessment regarding flood vulnerability. Using map overlay analysis in GIS software (ArcGIS); flood prone areas and topographic data along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan were digitized from PDF maps. Thus, the thesis work is an effort to analyze impact of flood when areas along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan are flooded. ESRI® GIS software Arc Map 9 and Arc View 3.3 is used for data preparation, integrating, analyzing, and spatial data with attribute table information. Finally, to show GIS can be an effective tool for development of flood emergency system as a part of disaster preparedness by the decision makers.