Risks, Loss, and Response to Flood Events in the World

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During the past 30 years, 40% of the total number of the flood events in the world occurred in Asia, whereas Southeast Asia is the second worst flood-affected region of the continent, after South Asia (Dutta and Herath 2004). Consequently, risks to lose human lives, goods and environmental assets are increasing. Therefore, understanding flood response characteristics and flood estimates are required not only for design and economic appraisal of hydraulic works, but also for efficient flood management schemes.Myanmar, the second biggest country in Southeast Asia,is highly exposed to flood hazards due to its complex topography and high rainfall intensities during the southwest monsoon season.In contrast to the demanding flood hazards, flood management for ugauged catchments in Myanmar has not been addressed yet. As floods are affected by the spatial distribution of terrestrial and climatic conditions through hydrological processes, detecting and mapping similarresponse characteristics that influence on flood generating can assist the water resources practitioners in management decision. As a flood management is not possible without knowing regional characteristics being an integral part of the flood estimation process, special concern is dedicated to the diverse spatial conditions.
To assess flood risk and adopt control measures, one needs to estimate flood magnitude at any watershed location. However, direct flood estimations using past flow data are not always possible due to insufficient flow records or missing data, particularly in developing countries like Myanmar. Due to the substantial costs involved, the density of hydrometric monitoring stations in Myanmar is 12,000 km2 per station, which is beyond the minimum adequacy of ...

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...ify hydrological homogeneous regions and to develop regional IF models in clustered ungauged catchments for the Chindwin River in Myanmar. The independent variables affecting flood generation are incorporated into the principal component analysis, and subsequent clustering of the leading principal components provides different homogeneous regions. IF at ungauged sites are indirectly estimated considering the relationship between flood values and catchment descriptors of the gauged sites. Afterwards regional IF models were developed for each predefined homogeneous region using feedforward ANN models, which were then compared with the conventional power form models. The flood generating variables and the hydrological homogeneous regions were derived and visualized by using GIS for quick referencing and decision making in national water resources management of Myanmar.

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