Afghanistan Flooding

Afghanistan Spatial Data Center (ASDC) mitigate the impact of flooding by implementing climate change adaptation concepts into development projects.

Flooding in Afghanistan is most likely to happen in the spring, when the snow melts, and there is a high level of rainfall. The March flood of 2007 was especially devastating, as it crippled a large part of the nation. Large-scale floods such as the one seen in 2007 have the potential to destroy: communication lines, the electricity grid, road networks, bridges, and contaminate drinking water in village wells. This level of damage has a negative impact on the countries economy.

Afghanistan’s economy is mainly sustained by agricultural and livestock produce, therefore floods hinder the economy to a considerable extent. Even a small flood, can take away the source of income of an entire village, and plunge its livelihood into uncertainty. While flooding itself is problematic. Climate change has also increased the severity of the flooding in Afghanistan, which means NGO’s and government programs need to reassess, and make changes to how they execute their programs.

While it is not possible to completely avoid flooding, we can mitigate the impact of flooding by implementing climate change adaptation concepts into development projects, and by creating awareness through the education and use of information technology tools such as the Afghanistan Spatial Data Center (ASDC).

Flood Risk

Through ASDC dashboard production, you can obtain information and data regarding to the number of people, buildings and type of land cover at flood risk. It is divided in low, moderate, and high flood risk. The search for information can be filtered for the whole country, at province level, or district level.

Conduct flood analysis down to the sub settlement level. Use it for gabion wall planning, or assess risk and potential number of population affected after a flooding has been reported.

Flood risk table by province/district to assess prioritization

Main area of interest. E.g. Afghanistan or a province

Subset of an Area of interest: e.g. Province or district

Total number of buildings within flood risk zones

Total number of settlements at risk which have buildup areas within flood risk areas

Type of land cover affected by flood risk

Population within flood risk area for the land cover types

Area at flood risk within the land cover area

Flood Prediction

Flood Likelihood Prediction: Updated multiple times a day. Assessing impact on people, buildings or land in Afghanistan that may potentially be affected by floods.

River Floods with prediction discharge curve for all larger rivers in Afghanistan

Map, down to the settlement level, for flood prediction. Inform staff and operations team in the field about the potential flood risk for the next days.

In the statistics tool, Use the flood prediction date selector to see past flood predictions. This feature can be practical to investigate large flood events.

Select the flood prediction model you want to use in the statistics tool: GFMS or GLOFAS.

GFMS is the Global Flood Monitoring System (http://flood.umd.edu/) developed by the University of Maryland and NASA. Its low resolution river flood forecasts are valid for 4 days and updated every 6 hours. It overestimates the number of people at risk as it does not differentiate between 5-20-100-year flood event.

GLOFAS - Global Floods Awareness System (www.globalfloods.eu) contains modified Copernicus Emergency Management Service information ( ECMWF/EU JRC) which we use to provide forecast estimates up to 20 days.

The Flash Flood risk are based on the WMO Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS) and it enables the iMMAP DRR program to integrate Imminent Flash Flood Threats, Persistence Flash Flood Threat and Forecast Flash Flood Threats. This data is updated every hour and valid for 6 hours.

These models In combination with the Afghanistan Flood Hazard Map, iMMAP modeled population and land use estimates it allows to assess the potential number of persons or productive land area at risk either of flash flood or river flood risk. The flood maps and statistics are is updated every hour.

Static Maps

iMMAP´s static maps on Flood risk: the ASDC contains more than 500 maps on various aspects of flood risk. The entire static map catalog includes more than 2500 maps for the humanitarian community in Afghanistan.

Settlement Inspector

For each settlement/village in Afghanistan, you can find data on number of people at flood risk, as well as the number of people within the flood prediction likelihood category.

Activation of Settlement inspector tool

Settlement Inspector interface is available for each settlement in Afghanistan

Within settlement Inspector, find the number of people and land cover type area sizes in easy-to-use graphical interfaces.

Finder Tool

ASDC´s finder tool will help you locate airports, settlements and health facilities for flooding emergency response. Accessibility, and construction purposes.

Training and Certification

Get dedicated training using the ASDC by our local national and international staff.

Our ASDC Professional User Certification can be obtained after completing the training program. Alternatively, it can be taken individually after registering on ASDC.

Go through our online interactive scenario based training and become certified in all aspects of the ASDC

Scenarios

There has been a flood in the Bakwa district. ANDMA wants to prepare a special plan for deployment to the urban areas. Urban areas can be more vulnerable during disasters due to a higher population density. They email you because they want to know how many population live in "built-up" areas which are at flood risk in Bakwa district. How do you find that information?

1

Open your browser and go to asdc.immap.org

2

Under the maps tab, click on Interactive Maps

3

Click on any of the maps displayed. i.e. Humanitarian Access

4

Click on Statistics tab on top of the map

5

From side menu on the right, choose Provinces and Districts and enter Farah and Bakwa, respectively.

Click Apply button

6

Under the flood risk tab, see how many people at flood risk, live on Built-up areas.

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) has submitted a proposal for the construction of a gabion flood protection wall in Boland Ab (located in Pashtunzarghun district, Hirat province. You have been asked to review this proposal and verify whether the flood wall is necessary. How many people are at flood risk in Boland Ab?

1

Open your browser and go to asdc.immap.org

2

Under the maps tab, click on Interactive Maps

3

Click on any of the maps displayed. i.e. River and Flash Flood Prediction

4

Click on Finder Tool tab on top of the map

5

From the menu on the right, click on the Settlements box, choose Province and Districts and enter Hirat and Pashtunzarghun, respectively. Then, from the drop down menu, find Boland Ab.

6

Once you have located Boland Ab in the map, use the Settlement Inspector tab, and click on top of the village's name to extract the information regarding that specific settlement.

7

Under Settlement Inspector, click on the Flooding tab. Then you can see how many people are at flood risk in Boland Ab.
In this case, 390 people are at flood risk.

There has been a flood in the Bakwa district, Farah province. ANDMA wants to prepare the correct amount of provisions for the population. They have emailed you, and they want to know what is the size of the population at flood risk. How many people live in high flood risk areas in Bakwa district?

1

Open your browser and go to asdc.immap.org

2

Under the maps tab, click on Interactive Maps

3

Click on any of the maps displayed. i.e. Humanitarian Access

4

Click on Statistics tab on top of the map

5

From side menu on the right, choose Provinces and Districts and enter Farah and Bakwa, respectively.

Click Apply button

6

Under the flood risk tab, see how many people are highly exposed to flood risk. In this case, 5.800 people.

What people think

WFP

"I will share the ASDC tool with my people in the field and make them use the tool to get information, and we will definitely be using the tool a lot for proposal writing in our projects at WFP."

Save the Children

"Finding maps and information from a trusted source is very important and now I know ASDC is that source. I use it for many purposes."

IOM

"The ASDC is a great portal for understanding disaster risk, humanitarian access, security incidents and more."

OXFAM

"As we facilitate big government projects, we are using many different sources and now I understand that your tool is very accurate and we can get accurate data form ASDC."

DMAC

"ASDC is useful for us, especially for analyzing data. The methodology of the training was very good and, as I am working with GIS it is very efficient for me."

UNMAS

"I am doing maps in our office. When someone wants any map I spend a lot of time doing it, but now I can make any map with exact data with the ASDC in five minutes."

ANDMA

"iMMAP did a really good job on the ASDC. The ASDC and is a valid data source where we can obtain a lot of interesting data that is useful for our field work."

FEWSNET

"When people want us to send them information about natural disasters, population and other related data, I know I can find the best data on the ASDC and help them."

WHO

"We learned many new things thanks to the training. We value the ASDC since it has a lot of relevant operational data in one single site. "

Welthungerhilfe

"The training was very good and we learned many new things from this sessions, and we request iMMAP for more training, especially for our provincial colleagues."

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Afghanistan Flooding

A Documentation of the Afghanistan Spatial Data Center