Flood Susceptibility Assessment and its Management in Malda District of West Bengal through Geospatial Technique

Flood is one of the most popular natural hazards that create havoc in the society. Flood involves inundation of a huge tract of area under water owing to heavy rainfall. Occurrence of flood lays a severe impact upon the agricultural sector. Flood not only brings about destruction of crops but also brings down the productivity of the soil. Malda district of West Bengal is not an exception in this regard. The district is one of the most flood prone districts and involves a lot of loss in crop production. The present study aims to identify the flood susceptible zones of the district through the application of Analytical Hierarchy Process and geospatial techniques and also makes an attempt to detect how much cropland falls within the very high susceptible flood prone area so that proper precautionary measures can be taken to minimize the maximum damage. The study results reveal that the western part of the district is more flood prone and about 55.27% of very high flood prone area is dominated by croplands. Hence, proper flood management techniques have to be adopted in this area to reduce the loss of production of crops owing to floods.