Chennai Flood Management Plan
We believe that Chennai's flood challenges can be managed. We believe that it is possible to create a resilient, safe Chennai.
This Flood Management Plan aims to achieve this by:
- Being Open - taking a genuinely open and collaborative approach that allows valued input from everyone
- Improving - we start with scarce information. But we can use this information to focus future efforts, and build out our collaborative analysis to create the most benefit. We are agile and iterative.
- Educating - we include access to all our base data, models and calculations. Users can independently assess the resolution, accuracy and understanding of uncertainty for all the work here, so they can make informed decisions.
The structure of the Flood Management Plan is based on the publication "Flood Risk Management: A Strategic Approach" by P. Sayers, Y. L.i, G. Galloway, E. Penning-Rowsell, F. Shen, K. Wen, Y. Chen, and T. Le
Quesne (Paris, UNESCO 2013). The full publication is available for download from the Asian Development Bank here: http://www.adb.org/publications/flood-risk-management-strategic-approach
By way of introduction to the Chennai Flood Management Plan, we think this image gives a great overview of what we are trying to achieve.
Concepts
It's from the associated document, “Strategic flood management: ten ‘golden rules’ to guide a sound approach”, by Paul Sayers et al., International Journal of River Basin Management, 2014, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
Execution
To realise this vision, we need to first do some hard work.
Here's a brief overview of the whole project:
- Understand where flooding comes from - the flood sources. In Chennai, this includes rainfall, ocean water levels, and of course tsunami.
- Understand how the flood moves through the city - the flood pathways. Does the rain fall on the mountains and flow to the city, or does it fall directly on the urban area and can't drain away? What happens if the ocean is experiencing high tide and storm surge at the same time as it's raining?
- OK, so now we know where the water flows - but what are the consequences? We need to determine the number and type of things that are in harm's way. This is the city's exposure to flooding.
- But different parts of the city have different levels of vulnerability to flooding. A modern apartment block may recover from a flood by cleaning the ground flood carpark, but the same flood may wash an the bulk of an informal settlement into the Indian ocean.
Now that we understand the potential flood characteristics, what are we going to do about it? This project looks at three forms of management:
- Before the flood - Things like preparedness, education, infrastructure design and construction
- During the flood - Things like flood warning systems, evacuation, emergency response and aid.
- After the flood - Things like managing insurance claims, capturing data to inform future management measures
Are you up for the challenge? Do you want to:
Expand your network and skillset through collaboration
Work with the latest web-based technologies
Use your skills to create a sustainable, positive impact to millions of people
We'd love to have your skills on board! If this sounds like something you'd like to donate your energy to, then get started here:
