Delineation of flood risk zones in Jodhpur District, Rajasthan, India using remote sensing, GIS and multi-criteria decision making techniques

The use of remote sensing data and the geographic information system (GIS) to prepare flood risk maps has gained enormous popularity among researchers. In the present study, a flood risk zone map has been prepared for Jodhpur District, Rajasthan using remote sensing and GIS techniques. CartoDEM Version-3 having 30 m spatial resolution along with Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS satellite images with 30 m spatial resolution is used to prepare thematic layers for elevation, slope, drainage density and land use. Monthly precipitation data from climatic research unit at a grid size of 0.5 degrees latitude by 0.5 degrees longitude is used to prepare rainfall map with 30 m spatial resolution. Soil map for the study area also at 30 m spatial resolution is extracted from FAO digital soil map of the world and then converted to raster data format using feature to raster converter tool in ArcGIS 10.3. Ranking and weight determined from multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique are assigned to the raster maps of the variables. The thematic layers were combined with the weighted overlay method in ArcGIS 10.3 software to determine categorised flood risk zone map of the study area.