Developing a GIS Based Decision Support System for Disaster Risk Assessment: A Study on South-West Coastal Region in BangladeshMd. Sultan Mahmud Inundating coastal regions in Bangladesh are most exposed and vulnerable to climatic hazard risks (Flood), cyclone and storm surges those causes to massive damages to life and property almost in every year. The effects of a natural disaster or a combination of more than one natural disaster may be direct loss of life and certainly damage to physical properties. Mitigating those risks and minimizing the scale of damages requires huge amount of resources that would cover the action of mitigation, recovery and preparedness. The natural disasters cannot be prevented fully but their impacts and damages can be minimized with sound disaster management strategy aided by the latest technological advancements in the field of Geo-Informatics. GIS is a powerful tool which can be used to create integrated geo-database, visualize scenarios, develop advanced spatial models and effective solutions, prepare hazard zonation maps, and management plans. Welldesigned GIS database supported model will contains critical information and helps to answer disaster risk assessment and management related questions, for example, for damage assessment and disaster relief as well as humanitarian aid in the event of a hazard. The model can give the risk map for sea level rise and cyclone according to the rise of water level and direction and speed of cyclone like all other models currently showing. But the proposed model will not only perform as a traditional model rather it will also provide resources map, that will include aerial map of the affected areas, population distribution, physical resource maps and alternative location to have quick rehabilitation to minimize the risks as an advance solution. The recurrent devastating hazards cause substantial losses in infrastructure, life and property. Economic growth of the country significantly depends on efficient structural and non-structural measurement against hazards. As a poor country Bangladesh cannot afford huge amounts of money for structural measurement. That is why it is more rational to place emphasis on non-structural measurement such as development GIS based risk mapping, damage mapping and estimation procedure etc. Ultimately this GIS based procedure may help policy makers to make effective response against possible hazards in future. |
