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Flood vulnerability index as a knowledge base for flood risk assessment in urban
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Article · January 2013

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Shahram Shahmohammadi-Kalalagh Hajar Nasiri

Islamic Azad University of Tabriz Universiti Putra Malaysia
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Journal of Novel Applied Sciences
Available online at www.jnasci.org
©2013 JNAS Journal-2013-2-8/266-269
ISSN 2322-5149 ©2013 JNAS

Flood vulnerability index as a knowledge base for flood risk

assessment in urban area

Hajar Nasiri1 and Shahram Shahmohammadi-Kalalagh2*

1- Urban planning and design department, Design and Architecture Faculty, University Putra Malaysia
2- Department of Water Sciences and Engineering, East Azarbaijan Science and Research Branch,Islamic
Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

Corresponding author: Shahram Shahmohammadi-Kalalagh

ABSTRACT: Climate change leads to increasing urban flooding hazard. Due to the extent of flooding
impacts there is a need to improve methods in flood risk management. One of the most important
sections of flood management is assessing flood vulnerability in urban scale. A lot of studies have been
done on the flood hazard, including flood vulnerability assessment because understanding of
vulnerability is not only vital for the existence of the exposed societies to extreme floods, but also for
their adaptation to climate change. For achieving this goal one approach is developing a Flood
Vulnerability Index (FVI).Vulnerability index, will determine which areas are most vulnerable to flooding
those should be considered in the future redevelopments. That means FVI produces a relationship
between the theoretical perceptions of flood vulnerability and the daily management process. This study
is mainly based on the literature on flooding vulnerability.

Keywords: Climate change, Flood management, Flood risk assessment, FVI, Urban area.

INTRODUCTION

Floods, the most prevalent of natural risks, are anticipated to happen more strictly and regularly in the future
because of climate change. This means that many urban areas across the globe are likely to be under serious
threat of floods, the adverse impacts of which are already believed only next to that of earthquakes (Balaban, 2009)
Unplanned rapid urbanization, change in land use and poor watershed management mainly in flood plains become
important issues for consideration as the flood causes (Adelekan, 2011). Identification of all kinds of natural threats
for decreasing their impacts involves different evaluations about both hazard and vulnerability. Regard to UN
guidelines, vulnerability can be evaluated as a percentage of the assumed losses caused by threats which are
include two groups: Direct damages which are happening during the hazard and Indirect damages which are
results of direct damages, so reduce the vulnerability is vital for all of the communities include urban environments
(Dall’Osso, 2010). High frequency and effects of flooding, have made the efficient urban flood management
planning necessary. Risk assessment is a vital component of flood management and reducing the vulnerability and
is becoming more important with population increasing (Ahmad and Simonovic, 2012). So there is a need for a
method to calculate flood vulnerability.

Floods in Malaysia
Malaysian cities have a good chance to not be exposed to some disaster like earthquake, but severe floods
occur frequently in this country. Flash flood and Monsoon flood are two main Types of flood which take place in this
country. The monsoon floods occur generally from Northeast Monsoon which be happening during November to
March with heavy rains to the southern part of Sarawak ,east coast states of the Peninsula and northern part of
Sabah. Some of the verified flood incidences in the country were in 1926, 1931, 1947, 1954, 1957, 1963, 1965,
1967, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2001, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2013. Report from DID
(Department of Irrigation and Drainage) uttered that around 29,000 sq.km or 9% of total land area of country and
more than 4.82 million people (22%) is involved by flooding every year. Flood annual also leads to around RM915
million loses in Malaysia. While monsoon flood is rule by long period and heavy precipitation, more local flooding
J Nov. Appl Sci., 2 (8): 266-269, 2013

which covers a big district has been reported in current times for instance 2th -6th October flood in 2003 that
influenced a large part of northwestern of the Peninsula include states of Kedah, Penang and Northern Perak or
two occasions happen in April 2002 and October in Kuala Lumpur which has been identified because of
uncontrolled development and activities within the catchment and flood plain (Abd Jalil Hassan, 2006). So the
necessity of comprehensive measures for managing and mitigating flood risk in Malaysia is obvious. Except
structural measures such as the construction of dams, levees or the SMART Tunnel, flood risk management in
Malaysia also includes non-structural measures special flood forecasts and early warning system. But flood
management relies seriously on the support of flood risk assessment in spatial planning. This can be achieved
through the flood risk maps or flood vulnerability assessment methods. At present, the development of these
methods is insufficient to be used for analysis in Malaysia (Ho, 2009).

Flood vulnerability
Flood vulnerability is the key element in flood risk assessment and damage evaluation. Researchers have
developed many methods to assess flood vulnerability. There is a need to develop our understanding of the
vulnerability because nowadays it is understood that vulnerability is the root cause of disasters. However, despite
increased knowledge about the vulnerability, flood risk is still very widespread. This leads to questions being raised
about the efficiency of vulnerability assessments and their effect on flood mitigation and adaptation (Khan, 2012).
United Nations described flood vulnerability as the degree of damage to a given items at risk caused by flood with
determined amount and was expressed as a scale from 0-1 (no damage to total damage) (United nations, 1982).
As the flood vulnerability in an area depends on some environmental, economic, social and even political factors it
is difficult to measure vulnerability (Jixi Gao, 2007). That means vulnerability is influenced by several factors
including human settlements conditions, infrastructure, authorities policy and abilities, social imbalances, economic
patterns, etc. So flood vulnerability is different for people in different condition (Pandey et al., 2010).
Regards to previous works vulnerability assessment methods can be divided in three groups(Dapeng Huang,
2012):
 Vulnerability index system
 Vulnerability curve method
 Disaster loss data
Each of these groups of method has some strength and weakness that is mentioned in Table 1.

Table 1. Vulnerability assessment methods (Dapeng Huang, 2012)

Methods for
assessing Vulnerability index system Vulnerability curve method Disaster loss data
vulnerability
 Widely used in flood  Is based on  Simple
vulnerability studies actual damage  Because of inaccurate and
Characteristics  Depends on complicated survey unevenly recorded data ,result
indices and weighting of their  Should be should be treated caution
subjective relatively
accurate
 Takes a lot of
time and
resource
 Not applicable
for other regions

Flood Vulnerability Index system

The FVI system can be used as an instrument to link a multidisciplinary subject with a large number of
components in a straight way and also can provide a good review of vulnerability in three scales include: River
basin, sub-catchment and urban area. This system helps decision makers to control the possible damages and
distinguish the precise measures for implementing before flooding (Balica and Wright, 2010). The Flood
Vulnerability Index can be used in action plans to manage flooding and can improve local decision-making
practices with appropriate measures to reduce vulnerability in different spatial levels (Balica et al., 2009) .
Parameters and indices should be designed to produce information for specific target areas.

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J Nov. Appl Sci., 2 (8): 266-269, 2013

Development Flood Vulnerability Index methodology in urban area

Urban areas are densely populated, which makes them vulnerable to flood impacts. These areas are
vulnerable to floods because of three important reasons: exposure, susceptibility and resilience. That means the
vulnerability of each area is reflective of the exposure and susceptibility and the resilience of that area to acclimate
from the effects of those conditions (Meulen, 2012). Exposure is the scope that human Settlements and people
lives are positioned in flood risk area (UNDP/BCPR, 2004). Susceptibility is exposed factors in the system, which
effect the probabilities of being harmed during floods (UNESCO-IHE, 2013). Resilience is adaptation capacity of
each community to changes in hazardous area by modifying itself to achieve an acceptable structural and
functional level (Galderisi, 2005). With these indicators, additional information can be provided for vulnerability
reduction. Table 2 illustrates the appropriate indicators in urban scale but it is an important matter that selection of
vulnerability indicators is directly relevant to the local study context.

Table 2. FVI system components (Balica, 2012; UNESCO-IHE, 2013)

Factors Indicators
Exposure Acronym susceptibility Acronym resilience Acronym
Population density Child morality Warning system
Disable people % disable Evacuation on roads
Social Cultural heritage Emergency services
Population Growth Shelters S
Past experience
Awareness &Preparedness A⁄P
Closeness to river Unemployment Amount of investment
Economic Industries Urban growth Flood insurance
River discharge Human development index Dams storage capacity
Rainfall Urban Growth
Evaporate Rate
Environmental Land Use
Contact with River Storage over yearly runoff ⁄
Topography T Dikes-Levees
Evaporate RateRain fall D-L
physical

The interaction between vulnerability factors and the vulnerability components in different spatial scales include
river basin, sub catchment and urban area serves as the base of this methodology (Balica, 2007). Although there
are some other grouping for component and indicators of this system. For instance, Dapeng Huang (2012)
suggests multidimensional vulnerability with four component include population vulnerability, death vulnerability,
agriculture and economic vulnerability. But regard to urban scale, FVI system is mentioned by (Balica, 2012) is
more relevant for urban areas. The general formula for FVI is calculated by classifying the component in three
groups of indicators: exposure (E), susceptibility (S) and resilience (R) (Balica et al., 2012).
(1)
With regard to urban indicators this equation is become to following ones (Balica, 2012).
[ ] (2)
⁄

[ ] (3)
[ ] (4)

[ ] (5)
⁄ ⁄

Total FVI of each urban area is average of these four FVI (Eq. 2-5). This index value is as follows (Table 3):

Table 3. Flood vulnerability interpretation (Balica, 2012)

Index value Description
Very small vulnerability to floods
0.01-0.25 Small vulnerability to floods
0.25-0.50 Vulnerable to floods
0.50-0.75 High vulnerability to floods
0.75-1 Very high vulnerability to floods

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J Nov. Appl Sci., 2 (8): 266-269, 2013

The index gives a number from 0 to 1, signifying low or high urban flood vulnerability and shows which urban
areas need detailed investigation for selecting more effective measures. This method shows that FVI provides a
reliable source for broad overview of flood vulnerability to take appropriate strategies.

CONCULSION

This study provides a review of assessing flood vulnerability approaches as part of flood risk management and
concerning on FVI methodology. This methodology recognizes different characteristics for different spatial scales,
allowing a more in- depth analysis and interpretation of local indicators .the whole concept of FVI is that we have a
hazard, in this case flood event which is effecting the system (river basin, sub-catchment or urban area) in four of
its main components (social, economic, environmental and physical). The FVI can be used in combination with
other decision making tools and specifically include participatory methods with the people of areas as identified as
vulnerable.

REFERENCES

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Ahmad SS, Simonovic SP. 2012. Spatial and temporal analysis of urban flood risk assessment. Urban Water Journal (ahead-of-print): 1-24.
Balaban MŞ. 2009. Risk society and planning: The case of flood disaster management in turkish cities. Turkey, Ankara, Middle east technical
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Balica SF. 2007. Development and Application of Flood Vulnerability Indices for Various Spatial Scales. Delft, UNESCO-IHE.
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