A Systematic Analysis of Flood Damages in Pakistan in the Year 2022

Abstract

Pakistan is a flood prone country and has a long history of floods. According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the 2022 flood started in July 2022 and was caused by climate change, monsoon rains, and melting glaciers. It affected around 33 million people, that is, one in seven. The floods have taken the lives of more than 1,700 people, one-third of which were children. There is a dire need to investigate the 2022 flood with a view to assess damages by visualizing/ mapping it to suggest suitable recommendations. This study focuses on a systematic analysis (Distribution, Duration, effect of flood on vegetation and population as well as effect of precipitation on flood) of 2022 Floods in Pakistan using MODIS 250 m 16 days NDVI product, IMERG late run rainfall data, UN Humanitarian population data, Sentinel-1 SAR imagery, MODIS landcover data and Global Human settlement layer data. These datsets were processed in ArcMap except Sentinel-1 SAR, MODIS landcover and GHSL datasets which were processed in Google Earth Engine. NDVI has been succesfully used to map flood/ vegetation extent and water/ vegetation area calculation as well as flood duration estimation. IMERG data has been used to estimate precipitation across the study area for entire flood duration. IMERG data has also been correlated with the available PMD precipitation data (eight weather stations). Four locations have shown strong positive correlation (0.733, 0.686, 0.560 and 0.533) with PMD data. UN Humanitarian population data has been used to asses the affected population. Google Eath Engine has been used as an alternate platform to map flood extents and assess all above mentioned damages