Geocarto International

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Flood risk assessment: role of mitigation capacity

in spatial flood risk mapping

Naser Ahmed, Muhammad Al-Amin Hoque, Newton Howlader & Biswajeet

Pradhan

To cite this article: Naser Ahmed, Muhammad Al-Amin Hoque, Newton Howlader & Biswajeet
Pradhan (2021): Flood risk assessment: role of mitigation capacity in spatial flood risk mapping,
Geocarto International, DOI: 10.1080/10106049.2021.2002422

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2021.2002422

Published online: 12 Nov 2021.

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GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL
https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2021.2002422

Flood risk assessment: role of mitigation capacity in

spatial flood risk mapping
Naser Ahmeda , Muhammad Al-Amin Hoquea,b, Newton Howladera and
Biswajeet Pradhanb,c,d
a
Department of Geography and Environment, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh; bCentre for
Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University
of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia; cDepartment of Energy and Mineral Resources
Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; dEarth Observation Center, Institute of
Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Globally, the frequency, intensity, and damage rate of floods have Received 11 May 2021
increased extensively in the last few decades. The present study Accepted 31 October 2021
proposes a spatial-based multi-criteria approach integrating miti-
KEYWORDS
gation capacity to map the degree of flood risk. Flood risk is cal-
Flood risk; mitigation
culated considering 14 relevant factors under three risk capacity; GIS; remote
components. Thematic layers were ranked through fuzzy member- sensing; fuzzy logic
ship functions, and risk components were prepared using fuzzy
overlay operation. To make a comparison, first, we calculated risk
with mitigation capacity and later without it. Results exhibit, with-
out mitigation capacity around 67% of the study area is exposed
to high flood risk, while after integrating mitigation capacity flood
risks decreased to 62%. Moreover, validation evaluation suggests
risk map integrating mitigation capacity is more accurate (82%)
than the risk map without it (79%). Therefore, the developed inte-
grated risk mapping approach is more efficient to assess flood
risk, and can be implemented by policymakers in similar
environments.

1. Introduction
Over the past few decades, floods are very frequent, widespread, and considered among
the most catastrophic natural hydro-meteorological disasters in the world (Hoque, Tasfia,
et al. 2019). Such disasters are often responsible for enormous deaths and economic dam-
age (Wang et al. 2011; Fernandez et al. 2016). From 1995 to 2015, floods caused approxi-
mately 1.6 million deaths, affected around 2.3 billion people, and responsible for US 166
billion dollars economic loss around the world (Wahlstrom and Guha-Sapir 2015; Lin
et al. 2019; Uddin et al. 2019). In monsoon-dominated tropical and subtropical regions
such as the Indian sub-continent, floods are one of the most catastrophic and perpetual
natural hazards (Islam and Dharanirajan 2017). The Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna
(GBM) river basins are known as one of the most flood-prone river basins in the world
(Uddin et al. 2019). The extensive rainfall in the upper river basin, Brahmaputra,

CONTACT Biswajeet Pradhan biswajeet.pradhan@uts.edu.au

ß 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 N. AHMED ET AL.

Kyaichinang, and Barak is responsible for extreme flooding events in these regions as 80%
of total rainfall has been received by these basins during the monsoon season (Rahman
et al. 2019).
Bangladesh is a flood-prone country, and almost every year several parts of it are
recurrently affected by extreme flood events (Bhuiyan SR and Al Baky 2014). Heavy mon-
soonal rainfall, flat terrain, massive sediment release, huge discharge from dams and bar-
rages, land-use changes, and other human interventions are vastly accountable for
flooding in Bangladesh (Sinha 2007; Hossain 2015). Annually, approximately 20–25% of
the country’s territory is inundated by floods (Kundzewicz et al. 2014). Bangladesh
Bureau of Statistics states that 24.44% of households in Bangladesh were affected by floods
from 2009 to 2014 (BBS 2015). A few recent studies have anticipated that the incidence
and intensity of flood disasters are likely to increase significantly under future climate
change circumstances (Chen et al. 2015; Fang et al. 2016; Ntajal et al. 2017). As a result,
individuals, properties, and the environments of Bangladesh will be at greater risk in the
coming future. Hence, it is very important to identify areas prone to floods using geospa-
tial techniques for implementing mitigation strategies to minimize the loss of life
and properties.
Several studies have been carried out successfully through remote sensing and spatial
analysis to map the risk of flood disasters using various methods. Most of these studies
have been conducted using different multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) by Meyer
et al. (2009), Lyu et al. (2018), Fernandez et al. (2016), Sharma and Roy (2018), Ghosh
and Kar (2018), Ntajal et al. (2017), Hu et al. (2017), statistical models (SM) by Falter
et al. (2015), Liu D et al. (2020), Wyncoll and Gouldby (2015), Zhou et al. (2019), and
machine learning (ML) techniques by Mojaddadi et al. (2017), Darabi et al. (2019), Li X
et al. (2019), Ma et al. (2019), Chen et al. (2019), which were incorporated into geospatial
technologies at the regional scale and with limited risk components. For detailed and
accurate risk mapping approach, it is essential to conduct the research considering all the
risk components which enable the best mitigation options to be selected in the context of
specific management plans (Blaikie et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2011).
Geospatial approaches incorporating remote sensing and multi-criteria techniques are
quite efficient for acquiring spatial flood risk information (Wang et al. 2011; Ntajal et al.
2017). Remote sensing promotes the ability to employ spatial environmental data from
satellite images, where spatial analysis allows us to collect, interpret, and integrate various
spatial decision-making datasets (Hoque, Tasfia, et al. 2019). To incorporate the multi-cri-
teria of the risk components, MCDM (analytical hierarchy process, fuzzy analytical hier-
archy process, Fuzzy Logic, etc.), statistical models (SM), and machine learning (ML)
methods have been applied widely (Fang et al. 2016; Mojaddadi et al. 2017; Ntajal et al.
2017; Ghosh and Kar 2018; Lyu et al. 2018; Sharma and Roy 2018; Zhang and Chen
2019). It is a well-known fact that because of the advancement of technology, machine
learning and deep learning models are more capable of providing better results since these
are based on real-world incidents. However, these models are highly appropriate for pre-
dicting susceptibility not for risk mapping while MCDM models such as Fuzzy Logic is
more appropriate for risk mapping purpose. Moreover, to reduce the preference and for
weighting the multi-criteria in the geospatial based risk assessment, Fuzzy Logic is very
conducive and efficient as a spatial decision-making tool (Liu and Lai 2009; Espada Jr
et al. 2013; Jun et al. 2013; Wu et al. 2013; Al-Abadi et al. 2017). Yet there are scopes for
future research. For instance, machine learning and deep learning can be integrated into
risk components for quantifying risk; however, there are still uncertainties since, to our
best knowledge, no study assessed flood risk using machine learning where mitigation
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 3

capacity is also considered. Therefore, so far MCDM technique such as Fuzzy Logic is
more preferable for assessing risk for a particular hazard. Fuzzy Logic has been used pre-
viously for the risk mapping of different types of natural hazards (drought, landslide, etc.)
as well as in other environmental sectors (Karabegovic et al. 2006; Aksoy and Ercanoglu
2012; Espada Jr et al. 2013; Jun et al. 2013; Al-Abadi et al. 2017; Araya-Mu~ noz et al. 2017;
Dayal et al. 2018).
Although Bangladesh is a highly flood-affected country, studies associated with flood
mapping approaches are very limited and no such studies until now have been conducted
on flood risk assessment using geospatial and multi-criteria assessment techniques inte-
grating mitigation capacity. During the literature review, some relevant studies were found
on Bangladesh floods (Bhuiyan and Dutta 2012; Masood and Takeuchi 2012; Dewan
2013; Bhuiyan and Al Baky 2014; Hoque, Tasfia, et al. 2019; Rahman M et al. 2019;
Uddin et al. 2019) but most of these studies either assessed flood vulnerability or flood
susceptibility with limited criteria. Rahman M et al. (2019) assessed flood susceptibility
for the whole of Bangladesh and applied different MCDM and Machine Learning techni-
ques using limited flood conditioning factors. They ignored some essential criteria such as
distance to river and road as well as river density. Hoque, Tasfia, et al. (2019) assessed
flood vulnerability, integrating physical vulnerability, social vulnerability, and coping cap-
acity to assess flood vulnerability. Some other studies on flood vulnerability were con-
ducted using single criteria such as only the digital elevation model by Bhuiyan and Al
Baky (2014) and land cover criteria by Bhuiyan and Dutta (2012). Considering all the
facts above and to fill the gap of inadequate research on flood risk mapping in
Bangladesh as well as in the global context, it is essential to develop a detailed flood risk
approach incorporating all the necessary components especially considering the mitigation
capacity in the risk assessment.
The selection of appropriate risk components is the key issue in the spatial flood risk
assessment. Risk assessment is usually calculated by multiplying three common risk com-
ponents: vulnerability, hazard, and exposure (Birkmann 2007). However, the actual risk of
a specific hazard cannot be identified without integrating the mitigation capacity of the
specific community and environment (Cutter 1996; Frazier et al. 2013; Rana and Routray
2018). Therefore, mitigation capability should be incorporated as a component in the risk
assessment procedure to evaluate risk information accurately (Cutter et al. 2003). At pre-
sent, to our knowledge, no such studies are available in the literature that has considered
mitigation capacity as a component in the flood risk assessment procedure.
This research aims at developing a Fuzzy Logic-based spatial flood risk mapping
approach using all components of risk and analyzing the role of mitigation capacity in
spatial flood risk techniques. The aims of the study are categorized into three specified
objectives: (1) to propose a spatial flood risk mapping approach considering three risk
components: vulnerability and exposure, hazard, and mitigation capacity; (2) to investigate
the proposed risk mapping approach at the local scale by integrating and not integrating
mitigation capacity; (3) to validate and compare the developed flood risk map-
ping approach.

2. Study area
The proposed flood risk method was performed in the Kurigram district of the Rangpur
division, which is an exceptionally flood-affected region located in northwest Bangladesh
(Figure 1). The geographical extent of this region is between 25
400 – 26
000 N latitude
and 89
300 –90
000 E longitude. Kurigram district was selected because floods in this
4 N. AHMED ET AL.

Figure 1. Study area, Kurigram district of Bangladesh. (a) Location of Kurigram district presenting elevation distribu-
tion (obtained from Survey of Bangladesh) as well as the Upazila (administrative unit) boundary, and (b) overall study
area in the context of Bangladesh.

region are extremely frequent, affecting the study area repetitively almost every year. The
study area is one of the most extreme riverine flood-prone districts in Bangladesh. The
flooding happens mainly due to flows from upstream catchment conveyed by the
Brahmaputra River as well as other large rivers, such as Dharla, Dudhkumar, Teesta, etc.
which are flowing through the heart of this study area. In 1998 and 2004, two massive
floods happened and around 69% and 54% of its area were flooded, respectively, which
makes this study area one of the major sensitive flood risk-prone states in the entire
country (Roy and Sarker 2016). The average elevation of the study area ranges between
18.08 meters and 34.84 meters (Figure 1). Human lives, households, and all sorts of infra-
structures are exceedingly susceptible because of existing large and small rivers and poor
mitigation measures (Xenarios et al. 2016). The area of Kurigram district is approximately
2266 km2 with a population density of 920 km2 (BBS 2012). The study area falls into a
sub-tropical monsoon-dominated region with a mean precipitation of 2931 mm and
almost 90% of mean rainfall recorded in the monsoon and post-monsoon season (Ghosh
and Kar 2018). In this region, the severity and consequences of floods are exceptionally
high from May to October, which is known as the rainy season in Bangladesh (Rahman
et al. 2007). Flat geographic location, poor flood management strategies, vulnerable popu-
lation, intense precipitation in the origin of rivers, and rapid river discharge enhance the
risk of flooding impacts of this particular region.
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 5

Figure 2. Methodological flowchart of the risk assessment approach followed in this study.

3. Methodological overview
This research adopted a Fuzzy Logic-based geospatial approach to combine various risk com-
ponents for assessing flood risk of the Kurigram district of Bangladesh. The Fuzzy Logic
method is quite popular and appropriate for solving complex problems, such as flood risk
assessment. Since it is simple to understand and allows flexibility to combine multiple map
layers and can be implemented readily in geographic information systems (GIS) (Pradhan
2011). It employs the spatial objects of the various measurement units into standardized val-
ues between 0 and 1 (Espada Jr et al. 2013). There are various risk equations with different
risk components are available for assessing the risk of other hazards. However, a well-estab-
lished and complete risk formula produces the best outcome. Considering the facts above and
after an extensive literature review, the risk Equation (1) and (2) have been selected for the
estimation of flood risk assessment in this study to identify the best flood risk assessment
technique. The methodological aspect of the study is presented in Figure 2.
Risk ¼ vulnerability & exposure  hazard (1)
Risk ¼ vulnerability & exposure  hazard=mitigation (2)

4. Data
The chosen criteria were analyzed using geospatial techniques and aggregated from vari-
ous data sources, considering national, international, and local government organizations.
6 N. AHMED ET AL.

Table 1. Data type and sources used for flood risk assessment.
Criteria Types Source Period
Land-use types, Sentinel 2 United States Geological Survey 2019
Normalized Difference (10 m resolution) (USGS) Earth explorer
Vegetation Index (NDVI)
Elevation, slope, Digital Elevation Model Survey of Bangladesh (SOB) 2014
(DEM) at 20 m
spatial resolution
Flood level Highest flood level Flood Forecasting & Warning Centre 1988  2017
(FFWC) (http://www.ffwc.gov.bd/)
2
Population density Density in km Bangladesh Bureau of 2011
Statistics(http://www.bbs.gov.bd/)
Soil types 10 m spatial resolution Bangladesh Agricultural Research 2014
Council (http://www.barc.gov.bd)
Distance to river, Shape file Manual on-screen digitization of 2019
river density sentinel-2 image
Precipitation intensity Daily mean Bangladesh Meteorological 1980–2018
precipitation data Department (BMD) (http://www.
bmd.gov.bd/)
Distance to temporary Point shape file Fieldwork and Ministry of disaster Up to date 2019
flood shelter, distance management and relief
to heath infrastructure
Distance to road Line shape file Local Government Engineering 2018
Department (LGED)
Embankment Line shape file Ministry of disaster management 2014
and relief

Besides, the field investigation was also considered as a source of several datasets. For
instance, temporary flood shelter and health infrastructure data with their spatial location
were collected from the local administrative offices as well as by following field inspection
and then were validated in the field. In 2019, several field visits were performed between
May and December to verify both the datasets and the study findings. Table 1 exhibits
the relevant attributes of different datasets in a concise format.

5. Methodology
5.1. Risk evaluation criteria, alternatives, and mapping
The severity of a flood depends on several factors and can be driven by various physio-
graphic, socio-economic, and climatic criteria that are closely related to flood conditions.
The most conventional and dynamic factors related to flood are elevation, slope, land
use types, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), flood level, soil types, dis-
tance to river, river density, precipitation intensity, temporary flood shelter, health infra-
structure, road network, embankment, and population density were selected in this
study. The preparation of spatial layers for each criterion and the Fuzzy Logic operation
was carried out using geospatial techniques. In total, 14 spatial criteria were developed
using GIS and remote sensing software ArcGIS and Erdas Imagine under three risk
components: vulnerability and exposure, hazard, and mitigation capacity. All the criteria
contain similar cell sizes of 10 m spatial resolution. However, other criteria such as ele-
vation, slope, and flood level contained a spatial resolution of 20 m since these layers
were prepared using a digital elevation model (DEM) with a 20 m resolution. To main-
tain consistency later, we resampled these criteria to 10 m. The characteristics, argu-
ments, logic, and mapping methods for each criterion have been explained in detail in
the following sections.
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 7

5.1.1. Factors under vulnerability and exposure components

According to Balica et al. (2012), vulnerability is the degree of loss that can be predicted
by taking into the conditions of certain exposure, susceptibility, and mitigation capacity
of a particular area. Six criteria associated with flood vulnerability and exposure were
selected in this study. The vulnerability component only consists of physical aspects,
including elevation, slope, NDVI, and soil types. On the other hand, for the exposure
component, we considered land-use types and population density.
Elevation and slope are the two most essential criteria, playing a substantial role in
assessing flood vulnerability (Dewan 2013; Gain and Hoque 2013). The low elevated area
and flat slope are ranked highly vulnerable to flood because this area will suffer from pro-
longed inundation. In contrast, areas with steeper slopes and high elevations are ranked
less vulnerable (Rao et al. 2013). The DEM was used in the study to generate elevation
and slope criteria obtained from the Survey of Bangladesh (SoB) with a spatial resolution
of 20 m.
NDVI is another crucial factor in assessing flood vulnerability (Khosravi et al. 2016;
Rahman et al. 2021). The Sentinel-2 satellite image was employed to determine the NDVI
of the study area, following Equation (3) considering Near Infra-Red (NIR) and Red
bands. NDVI values were classified into five categories based on the importance of floods.
NIRRed
NDVI ¼ (3)
NIR þ Red
Soil type is also an important factor as it determines the water holding capacity and
infiltration characteristics of the flood of a region which influences the intensity of the
floods significantly (Nyarko 2002; Azareh et al. 2019). Generally, runoff from heavy rain-
fall is expected to be faster and higher in clay soils than in sand (Cabrera and Lee 2019;
Sahana and Patel 2019). In addition, rain runoff is likely to be quicker in loam than in
sand. The soil type map of the study area is presented in Figure 3(d).
Land use types are one of the most significant exposures and an effective indicator for
flood risk assessment (Rahmati et al. 2016; Li et al. 2021). In this study, for producing the
land-use types criterion, two Sentinel-2 imageries were used to prepare high-resolution
land use maps. Sentinel-2 has a 10 m resolution and was a level-1C product. Therefore,
no radiometric and geometric corrections were required. A hybrid classification method
was performed in terms of classifying the Sentinel-2 imageries and categorized the study
area into six land use classes (Figure 3(e)). The entire classification method was adopted
following the work of Hoque, Pradhan, et al. (2019). Besides, the accuracy assessment,
which includes overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient, was conducted and the estimated
accuracy values were 93.29% and 91.81%, respectively. The whole accuracy assessment
procedure for the study area was implemented following Jensen (1996); Hoque
et al. (2016).
Population density is another crucial factor of vulnerability and exposure that signifi-
cantly influences risk mapping (Poompavai and Ramalingam 2013). This exposure criter-
ion was created using the population and housing census data for 2011 (Figure 3(f)).

5.1.2. Factors under hazard component

Hazard is known as the possibility of occurrences of potentially hazardous natural phe-
nomena in a certain period and over a particular area (Hazarika et al. 2018; Hoque,
Ahmed, et al. 2019). Thus, four hazard criteria have been selected in this study consider-
ing the location and hydrological variables: i.e., distance to the river, river density, flood
level, and precipitation.
8 N. AHMED ET AL.

Figure 3. Flood vulnerability and exposure criteria map in absolute (left) and standardized units (right): (a) elevation,
(b) slope, (c) NDVI, (d) soil types, (e) land use types, and (f) population density.

Flood is most devastating in the areas near to the rivers because during the flood river
expands and inundates the nearby areas (Wu et al. 2015). Several rivers are flowing from
north to south in the study area. Therefore, distance to river criteria is highly efficient in
the hazard assessment (Azareh et al. 2019). The low-lying active flood plains near the riv-
ers are highly flood-prone. The distance to river criteria was generated employing the
Euclidean tool in ArcGIS extension based on the river pattern shapefile, which was devel-
oped by on-screen manual digitization of Sentinel-2 imageries in ArcGIS (Figure 4(a)).
Similarly, the river density map was prepared using the line density tool and categorized
as higher river value means higher flood susceptibility (Figure 4(b)) (Lyu et al. 2018).
Flood level criterion is contributed directly to flood incidence (Bhuiyan and Al Baky
2014; Rahman et al. 2019). We created spatial flood level criteria using historical flood
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 9

Figure 4. Flood hazard criteria map in absolute (left) and standardized units (right): (a) distance to river, (b) river
density, (c) flood level, and (d) precipitation.

data and DEM data obtained from the Survey of Bangladesh (Figure 4(c)). The prepar-
ation of flood level criteria was conducted following a few steps. Initially, the past flood
level data was acquired from Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre (FFWC) from 1988
to 2017. In the second step, applying the Gumbel distribution, a maximum flood height
of 27.81 m was estimated for a 50-year return period. In the final step, using the bathtub
approach, a flood level map was prepared following Bhuiyan and Baky (2014).
Generally, floods occur during monsoonal rains in the study area. In terms of the
Brahmaputra River basin, the occurrence of rainfall in and around the river basins is
responsible for the flooding in the study area. Therefore, the current study considered
annual precipitation distribution based on the rainfall stations located in and adjacent to
the study area for maintaining the coherence of the spatial dataset. The mean annual pre-
cipitation data around the study area was obtained from the Bangladesh Meteorological
Department (BMD) for the year 1980–2018 and classified into five classes applying the
kriging interpolation technique (Hoque et al. 2019) in ArcGIS (Figure 4(d)).

5.1.3. Factors under mitigation capacity component

Mitigation capacity is the fundamental actions and key initiatives that are designed to
reduce the consequences of a particular hazard (Mei et al. 2018). To evaluate the mitiga-
tion capacity of the Kurigram district, four criteria (e.g., temporary flood shelter, health
facilities, embankment, and road network) were selected.
Flood shelters and health facilities can play a vital role in minimizing disaster effects
by providing safety, hygiene, sanitation, and medication (Hoque, Tasfia, et al. 2019). In
10 N. AHMED ET AL.

Figure 5. Flood mitigation capacity criteria map in absolute (left) and standardized units (right): (a) distance to tem-
porary flood shelter, (b) distance to health facilities, (c) distance to road, and (d) embankment.

this study, flood shelter and health infrastructure locations were collected during the field-
work in December 2019 using a global positioning system (GPS) as well as acquired from
the Ministry of disaster management and relief. To develop the spatial layers of temporary
flood shelter and health facilities criteria, the Euclidean distance tool in the ArcGIS exten-
sion was utilized (Figure 5(a,b)).
During the flood period, major roads play a significant role in particular concerning
the provision of relief work. Moreover, the rescue and relief operations in those affected
regions of the study area entirely rely on the presence of highway roads. Besides, in the
sub-continent regions, major roads also serve as temporary flood shelters (Ghosh and Kar
2018). The major road data were collected from the Local Government Engineering
Department (LGED) and generated a raster layer using the Euclidean distance tool
(Figure 5(c)). Similarly, the placement of embankments is also crucial, which resists floods
and decreases the consequences. Based on the availability of the embankment, the entire
study area was categorized into two classes (Protected and Unprotected) (Figure 5(d)).

5.2. Application of fuzzy membership function for assigning weights

Unlike the traditional Boolean logic, which calculates the number of a function of the
absolute values either in true or false, Fuzzy Logic computes the absolute values in the
form of degree of truth. In other words, Fuzzy Logic comprises the ability to convert a
Boolean logic value (0 or 1) to Fuzzy Logic (0 and 1). Such conversion for geospatial data
can be conducted by employing a fuzzy membership function. Nevertheless, initially, all
the data must be prepared as Boolean logic so that the weights by fuzzy membership
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 11

function can be assigned. Thus, all the classified into certain classes following three classi-
fication techniques: manual, equal interval, and natural break classification (Table 2).
Consequently, Boolean weights were assigned from 1 to 10 based on the importance of
the criteria following Mullick et al. (2019). Finally, the fuzzy membership function was
applied using three algorithms (Large, Small, and Linear) following Dayal et. (2018). The
variables assigned as Fuzzy Large are inversely related, which means the higher the weight
lower the vulnerability. In contrast, the variables assigned as Fuzzy Small are directly
related, which means the lower the weight higher the vulnerability (Table 2). Moreover,
only the population density criteria are assigned as Fuzzy Linear because it is appropriate
when there is a linear function between the user-specified maximum and minimum value.
The fuzzy large and fuzzy small can be theoretically presented as equations 4 and 5,
respectively, where f 1 is the spread and f 2 is the midpoint.
1
lðxÞ ¼
f 1 ð4Þ
1þ x
f2

1
l ðx Þ ¼
 f 1 ð5 Þ
1þ x
f2

5.3. Risk assessment using fuzzy overlay operation

Once weights were assigned for all the factors, a fuzzy overlay operation was taken place
to generate all the components of flood risk so that risk can be calculated. ArcGIS soft-
ware provides a readily available fuzzy overlay operations package that consists of five sets
of operations, i.e., AND, OR, PRODUCT, SUM, and GAMMA. Nevertheless, following
Espada Jr et al. (2013), who applied GAMMA overlay to generate a flood risk map of
Brisbane city, this study also used default GAMMA overlay to calculate the flood risk of
the study area. The theoretical expression of the GAMMA overlay has been presented in
Equation (6). In Equation (6), c represents a value from 0 to 1, lsum presents the sum of
fuzzy algebraic which was calculated using Equation (7), while lproduct is the product of
fuzzy algebraic modules. Once all the three risk components are ready, by applying for-
mulas 1 and 2, final risk maps (without mitigation capacity and with mitigation capacity)
were generated. The Raster Calculator tool in ArcGIS was used to implicate formulas 1
and 2.
lgamma ¼ ðlsum Þc  ðlproduct Þ1c (6)
Y
n Y
n
lsum ¼ 1  ð1  li Þ and lproduct ¼ 1  ð li Þ (7)
i¼1 i¼1

5.4. Efficiency assessment of the risk maps

Efficiency assessment is required to evaluate the effectiveness and accuracy of the pro-
duced result. We used the Receiver Operative Characteristic (ROC) curve for verifying
our risk maps to indicate the best flood risk approach for the local scale by validating risk
with and without mitigation capacity. This is a classical way to compute the efficiency
and is used extensively to evaluate the results of various natural hazard assessments such
12 N. AHMED ET AL.

Table 2. Criteria of flood vulnerability, hazard and mitigation capacity with their weights, rating, function
and assumption,.
Fuzzy
Risk Weight membership
components Criteria Break value assigned Rating function Assumption
Vulnerability Elevation (m) 18.1–23.6 2 Very high Fuzzy Small Inversely related
and
Exposure
23.6–26 4 High
26.1–27 6 Moderate
27.1–29.3 8 Low
29.4–34.8 10 Very low
Slope (degree) 0–0.07 2 Very high Fuzzy Small Inversely related
0.08–0.14 4 High
0.15–0.28 6 Moderate
0.29–0.56 8 Low
0.57–3.35 10 Very low
NDVI 0.3 to 0.02 10 Very high Fuzzy Large Directly related
0.02 to 0.01 8 High
0.01 to –0.12 6 Moderate
0.13–0.24 4 Low
0.25–0.35 2 Very low
Soil types Silty clay loam 9 High Fuzzy Large Directly related
Silty loam, 6 Moderate
Loam clay, loam 3 Low
silt, loam

Land use types Closed and open 2 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
water bodies
River sand 4 Low
Vegetation cover 6 Moderate
Cultivated land 8 High
Settlements 10 Very high
Population <500 2 Very low Fuzzy Linear Directly related
density (km2)
500–700 4 Low
700–900 6 Moderate
900–1100 8 High
>1100 10 Very high
Hazard Distance to 0–1000 2 Very high Fuzzy Small Inversely related
river (m)
1000–2000 4 High
2000–3000 6 Moderate
3000–4000 8 Low
>4000 10 Very low
River density 1.2–2 9 Very high Fuzzy Large Directly related
(km/km2)
0.7–1.1 6 High
0.3–0.6 3 Low
0–0.2 1 Very low
Flood level (m) <1 1 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
1.1–2 3 Low
2.1–3 6 High
>3 9 Very high
Precipitation 1374.6–1384.3 2 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
intensity (mm)
1384.4–1390.1 4 Low
1390.2–1394.7 6 Moderate
1394.8–1399.9 8 High
1400–1408.1 10 Very high
Mitigation Distance to 0–1000 2 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
capacity temporary
flood
shelter (m)
(continued)
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 13

Table 2. Continued.
Fuzzy
Risk Weight membership
components Criteria Break value assigned Rating function Assumption
1000–2000 4 Low
2000–3000 6 Moderate
3000–4000 8 High
>4000 10 Very high
Distance to 0–1000 2 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
health
infrastructure
(m)
1000–2000 4 Low
2000–3000 6 Moderate
3000–4000 8 High
>4000 10 Very high
Distance to 0–1000 2 Very low Fuzzy Large Directly related
road (m)
1000–2000 4 Low
2000–3000 6 Moderate
3000–4000 8 High
>4000 10 Very high
Embankment Protected 5 Low Fuzzy Large Directly related
Unprotected 10 High

as floods, landslides, erosion and droughts as well as for groundwater mapping

(Mojaddadi et al. 2017; Hoque et al. 2020).
Several field visits were conducted in 2019 to accumulate validation points. The flood
location and condition were collected using GPS devices during the 2019 flood events.
However, some places in the study area are so remote and almost inaccessible during
floods. Considering the fact, some flood locations were also collected from the Landsat 7
image (obtained from USGS earth explorer) for the July 2019 flood period. Due to the
immense amount of clouds during the flood period, it is challenging to get the expected
cloud-free satellite image. However, we used the best available cloud-free product and
classified it into two specific classes using unsupervised classification techniques: i.e., flood
and non-flood following Uddin et al. (2019) (Figure 6(a)). Finally, in total, 782 flood loca-
tions were prepared based on fieldwork as well as using the satellite image (Landsat 7)
where all the flood points (100%) were implemented as validation datasets (Figure 6).

6. Results
6.1. Vulnerability and exposure mapping
The spatial distribution of vulnerability and exposure map has been illustrated in Figure
7(a). It reveals 30% of the study area, which is 691 km2 has fallen to very-high to high
flood vulnerable class. Most of these exposed regions are situated in the south-eastern,
south-western, and some portions of the southern part of the study area, more specifically
Raumari, Kurigram Sadar, Char Rajibpur, and part of Rajarhat Upazila. Several significant
indicators, such as flat and gentle topographic conditions, less vegetation cover, vulnerable
land-use types, and exposed population density are mainly responsible for creating such a
vulnerable situation. In contrast, 38% (861 km2) of the total area is mapped with low to
very-low flood vulnerable class. High altitude, steeper slopes, less population, and less vul-
nerable land-use types are mainly accountable for lesser vulnerability in those areas.
14 N. AHMED ET AL.

Figure 6. (a) Flood classification map developed using Landsat 7 image of 17/07/2019 presenting flood, non-flood
and validation points and (b), (c), (d), (e), (f), (g) exhibiting the flood situation of 2019 captured during fieldwork.

Meanwhile, a considerable portion (31%) has fallen under the moderate flood vulnerable
class located mainly in the southern part of the Kurigram district.

6.2. Hazard mapping

The spatial variation of the flood hazard of the study area is presented in Figure 7(b).
The result shows that 37% (843 km2) of the hazard map is exposed to a very-high hazard
category, which is the highest among all the risk components class, followed by 19%
(434 km2) as a high flood hazard class. The northern, southern, and south-eastern parts of
the study area, in particular, Kurigram Sadar, Chilmari, Raumari, Char Rajibpur, and part
of Nagershwari Upazila are mostly covered with these high to very-high flood hazard
classes. Along with active rivers, high river density, high flood levels, and extensive rainfall
are mainly responsible for intense flood hazards in those regions. The moderate hazard
zone has covered 18% (416 km2) of the study area, and most of it is located in the western
and south-western portions of the study area. A considerable amount of areas along the
Ulipur, Rajarhat, and Phulbari were identified as moderate hazard zone because the flood
influencing factors are likely to the less effective in those areas. Conversely, low to very-
low hazards cover 17% (387 km2) and 8% (186 km2), respectively, which are areas mostly
away from active rivers and found in the Eastern part of the Kurigram district. The
degree of the hazard was expectedly low in these areas because of very little influence of
the river network, flood level, and precipitation.
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 15

Figure 7. Maps of risk assessment components of the study area: (a) vulnerability and exposure, (b) hazard, and (c)
mitigation capacity.

6.3. Mitigation capacity mapping

Figure 7(c) exhibits the overall mitigation capacity of the Kurigram district against the
flood. A particular region with effective mitigation measures indicates the region has the
ability to reduce consequences and consists of a better adaptive capacity against particular
natural hazards. According to the prepared mitigation capacity map, central, southeastern,
and western portions of the study area were marked as very-high (11%) to high (21.1%)
mitigation measures. The very-high and high mitigation capacity classes combinedly cover
around one-third, which is 32.3% (731 km2) of the study area. These specific portions
consist of proper mitigation capacity, such as temporary flood shelter, health institution
for emergency medical facilities, major roads, and embankments, which provide the basic
facilities to cope with the disaster. In contrast, the better part of the area (46%
1043 km2) along and near to the Brahmaputra River covering Ulipur, Chilmari, Char
Rajibpur, and parts of Raumari were classified as having very-low and low mitigation cap-
acity. Moreover, moderate mitigation capacity was witnessed in the center sides of the
study site, considering 21% (492 km2) of the area.

6.4. Risk mapping without mitigation capacity

The first flood risk mapping approach of the study area without integrating mitigation
capacity was generated using equation 1 (Figure8(a)). The spatial distribution of the first
risk map indicates around 16% of the study area, which is 356.1 km2 fell into very-high
flood risk; while almost 30% of the study area belongs to the high flood risk class (Table
3). Those areas are mostly located near the study area’s southern and eastern part near
the Brahmaputra River. On the other hand, moderate to very-low flood risk cover around
55% of the study region, which can be observed primarily on the western part of the
Kurigram district and located away from the major rivers. The high to very-high flood
16 N. AHMED ET AL.

Table 3. Area coverage of risks and risk components (vulnerability and exposure, hazard and mitigation capacity)
classes and share of the events according to the defined classes.
Risk without Risk with
mitigation mitigation
Vulnerability and exposure Hazard Mitigation capacity capacity capacity
Area Area Area Area
Class (km2) % Area (km2) % (km2) % (km2) % (km2) %
Very high 251.1 11.1 843.0 37.2 254.0 11.2 356.1 15.7 310.9 13.7
High 439.7 19.4 434.0 19.1 477.5 21.1 669.6 29.5 529.3 23.4
Moderate 714.4 31.5 416.1 18.4 492.1 21.7 504.4 22.3 575.6 25.4
Low 535.8 23.6 386.9 17.1 331.5 14.6 228.3 10.1 606.9 26.8
Very low 325.8 14.4 186.1 8.2 711.5 31.4 507.6 22.4 243.4 10.7

risk is comparatively high in this first map because the mitigation capacity was
not integrated.

6.5. Risk mapping with mitigation capacity

Finally, the flood risk scenario of Kurigram district integrating mitigation capacity was
developed by following Equation (2) and is shown in Figure 8(b). The spatial analysis of
the second risk map demonstrates that around 14% (311 km2) of the study area is under
a very high-risk class, whereas 23% (529 km2) of the target area belongs to the high-risk
zone (Table 3). Most of these high and very-high-risk zones were observed in the center,
south-eastern and southern of the study site. Most of the high-risk zones have very low
topographic conditions, exposed populations, very close to the river network along very
poor mitigation capacity. The specific regions exposed to very high risk are Kurigram,
Sadar, Chilmari, Raumari, Ulipur, and Char Rajibpur, which are mostly very close to the
major rivers in the study area (Table 4). On the contrary, the particular regions far from
the major rivers and consist of high mitigation capacity were marked as low and very-low
risk zones. These risk zones covered a significant segment of the study area (37%) and
were mostly found in the northwestern part (Rajarhat, Phulbari, part of Bhurungamari) of
the study site (Table 4).
As the risk map is the final production of three risk components, therefore, the risk is
comparatively low in this map (Figure 8(b)) than in the first flood risk map (Figure 8(a)).
In other words, because of the integration of mitigation capacity, the high flood risk sub-
sided in some areas, for example, the south-eastern and south-western portion of the
study area (Figure 8(b)) transformed into moderate to the low-risk class, which was high
to very-high flood risk in the first flood risk map.

6.6. Validation of risk maps

The accuracy of the flood risk maps consisting of two and three risk components (devel-
oped using the Fuzzy Logic) was evaluated through the ROC curve. As this study did not
require training samples, therefore, just the prediction rate curve was calculated, and the
result for prediction rates of the flood with mitigation capacity is 82.4%, whereas the
accuracy is decreased to 79.2% when mitigation capacity was not integrated (Figure 9).
The value of AUC range between 0.5 to 0.1, values higher than 0.8, and close to 1 repre-
sents a higher accuracy. It suggests that the model can predict specific disaster events
without bias, and the overall performance is satisfactory. Therefore, the prediction rate of
the risk model with the mitigation capacity of 82.4% indicates the exactness and
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 17

Figure 8. Maps of risk assessment: (a) without mitigation capacity and (b) with mitigation capacity.

Table 4. Distribution of Districts and Upazilas in different flood risk classes integrating mitigation capacity.
Area of Kurigram district according to flood risk (km2)
Very-low Low Moderate High Very-high
Total
District name Upazila name Area % Area % Area % Area % Area % Area
Kurigram Bhurungamari 25.0 10.9 115.6 50.4 84.0 36.6 5.0 2.2 0.0 0.0 229.5
Nageshwari 63.1 14.9 119.8 28.4 122.9 29.1 98.9 23.4 17.3 4.1 422.0
Phulbari 20.4 12.7 87.2 54.3 49.4 30.8 3.2 2.0 0.3 0.2 160.6
Kurigram Sadara 41.0 14.7 44.6 16.0 48.7 17.5 91.9 33.0 52.2 18.7 278.3
Rajarhat 118.7 67.9 36.9 21.1 17.9 10.2 1.3 0.8 0.0 0.0 174.8
Ulipura 35.5 7.8 91.7 20.1 98.9 21.7 147.3 32.2 83.6 18.3 456.9
Raumaria 0.3 0.1 22.1 8.9 87.6 35.2 92.3 37.1 46.8 18.8 249.1
Chilmaria 7.0 7.3 11.3 11.7 27.2 28.3 31.4 32.6 19.4 20.1 96.3
Char Rajibpura 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.1 38.9 19.6 135.6 68.3 23.8 12.0 198.5
a
Upazilas under high flood risk according to this result.
18 N. AHMED ET AL.

Figure 9. AUC for prediction rate (with mitigation capacity 82.4% and without mitigation capacity 79%).

trustworthiness of the developed model. On the other hand, the prediction rate of the
flood risk model without mitigation capacity of 79.2% indicates poor accuracy compared
to the other model.

7. Discussion
Over the last few decades, floods have become very frequent, widespread, and responsible
for enormous deaths and economic damages (Wang et al. 2011; Fernandez et al. 2016).
Such consequences because of the flood will be more devastating in the coming future
due to rapid climate change (Chen et al. 2015; Fang et al. 2016; Ntajal et al. 2017).
Therefore, an accurate flood risk mapping approach is necessary to identify the actual
flood risk scenario. However, without consideration of mitigation capacity (flood shelter,
embankments, road network, etc.); the flood risk mapping approach is incomplete.
Therefore, this study attempted to assess and compare flood risk by integrating and with-
out considering mitigation capacity so that a detailed flood risk mapping approach can
be proposed.
The findings of the study demonstrated some significant observations, such as risk level
of flood minimized when mitigation capacity was integrated. Moreover, the flood risk
with mitigation capacity is more accurate than the other model without mitigation cap-
acity. For instance, approximately 67% of the total area of the Kurigram district was mod-
erate to very-high risk to flooding when the mitigation capacity was not considered. On
the contrary, flood risk decreased to 62% when the mitigation capacity was integrated. In
addition, according to the ROC curve-based evaluation techniques, the integrated risk
mapping approach is more accurate than the risk map without mitigation capacity. Such
findings indicate the significance of mitigation capacity for a detailed flood risk map-
ping approach.
Moreover, consistency was found among all the risk components as well as in the final
risk output with mitigation capacity. The high vulnerable categories of vulnerability and
hazard are mostly located where the study area has very poor mitigation measures, for
instance, the regions where fewer flood shelters, health facilities, embankments, and road
networks are available and mostly consist of susceptible conditional factors (i.e., low eleva-
tion, close to the river, high precipitation, high population density, etc.). Such a scenario
may intensify the flood, although the risk levels of a few places have been reduced due to
the status of available mitigation measures. The findings of the study are corroborated by
 GEOCARTO INTERNATIONAL 19

other similar flood assessment research of Rahman et al. (2019); Uddin et al. (2019); Roy
and Mahmood (2016). Moreover, incorporation mitigation capacity along with vulnerabil-
ity and hazard components consolidated the previous flood risk mapping approach by
Fang et al. (2021), Ghosh and Kar (2018), Lyu et al. (2018), and Mojaddadi et al. (2017)
where flood risk assessed without integrating mitigation capacity. Thus, planners and
engineers can use the proposed risk mapping approach for a detailed and accurate flood
risk assessment.
Although this research has tried to overcome all the limitations, this study is associated
with a few drawbacks. Given that a total of 14 criteria were considered under the three
risk components in this study, it was very challenging to accumulate up-to-date and high-
resolution datasets. DEM is the most important dataset in flood mapping, yet this study
used a 20 m resolution DEM to prepare the topographic factors. DEMs with better reso-
lution and higher accuracy could deliver better outcomes. However, this is the best quality
DEM available for the study area because in a developing country like Bangladesh, man-
aging very high-quality DEM is difficult. Some other input datasets were also outdated;
for instance, population density data was acquired in 2011. Other associated inputs of
floods, such as geology, aspect, curvature, Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), and Stream
Power Index (SPI) were not considered in this research because these criteria are more
suitable for susceptibility mapping rather than risk mapping. For the efficiency test, valid-
ation points were acquired from field data and classified flood images because some places
are almost impossible to visit during flood events. Getting validation points from the field
would have been more reliable. Besides, this study only considered a single multi-criteria
model, although the application of advanced models such as Artificial Neural Network
(ANN) and Machine Learning could provide better results. Future studies can address
these limitations. Despite these few limitations, the generated risk mapping procedure
integrating mitigation capacity can still be very effective for a similar geographical loca-
tion, which will undoubtedly strengthen the flood management initiatives.

8. Conclusion
The role of mitigation capacity in spatial flood risk mapping is successfully examined in
this research. Flood risk was calculated twice with and without mitigation capacity using
Fuzzy Logic technique. Results exhibit that approximately 67% of the Kurigram district
are exposed to moderate to very-high flood risk when the mitigation capacity was not
considered. On the contrary, flood risk decreased to 62% when the mitigation capacity
was integrated. Our findings from validation through receiver operating characteristics
(ROC) indicate that this proposed integrating risk mapping approach is more accurate
(82.4%) than the risk map without mitigation capacity (79.2%). The results of the valid-
ation proved that the application of mitigation capacity can effectively map accurate flood
risk information at the local scale. Based on the acceptable level of accuracy, future rele-
vant studies should consider mitigation capacity in their analysis to provide more reliable
outcomes. Besides, the Fuzzy Logic was found useful for producing the required risk map
through fuzzy membership functions and fuzzy overlay operation. Both the flood risk
maps exhibit high to very-high flood risks for Chilmari, Raumari, Ulipur, and Char
Rajibpur, and some parts of Kurigram Sadar. Moreover, the moderate flood risk areas are
mostly found in some scattered portions of Raumari, Chilmaria, and Kurigram Sadar. The
areas under Rajarhat, Phulbari, and part of Bhurungamari are classified as low to very-
low flood risk classes. The outcomes of the study can be helpful to enhance resilience and
20 N. AHMED ET AL.

can be implemented by the local government and administration for developing effective
mitigation measures against flood hazards.
The proposed risk mapping approach can be applied to compute riverine flood risk in
other geographical set-ups for local and regional scales by modifying a few criteria and
datasets. While applying the proposed model in other environments, planners need to be
cautious. For instance, for urban flood risk mapping variables related to river patterns can
be underestimated. In addition, for flash flood risk mapping, topographical factors such as
aspect, curvature, Topographic Wetness Index (TWI), and Stream Power Index (SPI) can
be given more preferences. Such modification can be fruitful in terms of better accuracy
and reducing computational costs.

Acknowledgments
We thank the relevant organizations (Survey of Bangladesh, Flood Forecasting & Warning Centre,
Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council, and the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief) for pro-
viding the necessary data. The authors acknowledge Rasel Mia and Anik Shuvra Daw for their
field assistance.

Disclosure statement
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data availability
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Funding
This research is funded by the National Science and Technology (NST) fellowship under the Ministry of
Science and Technology, Bangladesh to support the MSc thesis program.

ORCID
Naser Ahmed http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2775-0592
Biswajeet Pradhan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9863-2054

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