Role of Information Technology in Flood Disaster Management in Kerala: a Brief Overview

Flooding may occur as an overflow of water from water bodies, such as a river, lake, or ocean, in which the water overtops or breaks levees, resulting in some of that water escaping its usual boundaries. Kerala state covers an area of 38,863 km2 with a population density of 859 per km2 spread across 14 districts. Beginning on 15 August 2018, severe floods affected the south Indian state of Kerala, due to unusually high rainfall during the monsoon season. It was the worst flooding in Kerala in nearly a century. Kerala received heavy monsoon rainfall, which was about 256% more than the usual rain fall in Kerala, on the mid-evening of August 8, resulting in dams filling to capacity; in the first 24 hours of rainfall the state received 310 mm (12 in) of rain. With the use of sophisticated technologies, it has been easier to manage disasters both natural and man-made. The main objectives of the proposed research work is identify the various aspects of IT which were used efficiently for the flood disaster management during August 2018 in Kerala State. A QuickBird image taken during August 2018 with 0.6 m resolution was downloaded from Google Earth (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA) and landuse maps (Landsat L7 ETM+, USGS) were used to track the flooded area in Kerala State. For the baseline survey, semi-structured questionnaires were prepared covering demographic, socio-economic and characteristics of households, as well as aspects of flood damage to house, property and agricultural production. Information Technology is widely used to save the lives of thousands of flood affected people in the Kerala state during the heavy floods in August 2018. These technologies could be further explored for more efficient flood coordination and disaster management in future.