Abstract:
One of the issues that bedeviled Pakistan right after independence was lack of planning. Being largest city of Pakistan and trade hub from beginning, Karachi has experienced a huge influx of migrants since independence. Since there was a lack of proper planning and no measures were taken to properly accommodate the people, informal settlements were developed to accommodate the population. The residents of these settlements discharged sewage into the storm water drains leading to blockages. Afterwards when the vicinities of the drains were flooded due to the previous practices, the same residents started to compact waste along the sides of the drains to secure them consequently reducing the width of the drains. Moreover, the construction of impervious surfaces such as roads, highways, offices etc. on the storm water drains has also adversely affected the water path. This urban sprawl, inefficiency of the urban planning unit and poor infrastructure has led Karachi to become a victim of the “The Urban Stream Syndrome” (Booth et al 2016). This term is used to represent the degradation of a natural drainage system due to urbanization. Today Karachi experiences the worst floods leading to loss of life either by drowning or electrocution, economic losses, and disruptions in normal functioning of the community. Keeping in view the situation, a project is designed with the objectives. (i) To understand the urban morphological dynamics of the city, historic flood events and as consequence identify the areas that are most prone to flooding. (ii) To propose a mitigation plan that falls under low impact development. (iii) To engineer a device and dashboard for real time monitoring of water situation in floods. To achieve desired objectives, we divided our work into 3 phases. (i) In first phase we identified those regions that are vulnerable to floods in Karachi. (ii) In second phase we presented a mitigation plan by determining watershed areas and retention pond sites in Karachi. (iii) In last phase our group made a device for monitoring local areas of Karachi that are at higher risks of floods. All the information provided by this device will be displayed on an interactive dashboard and the results will be displayed on the Web and mobile application.
