Flood Management in Pakistan’s Ecology

Author(s): Syed Ahmad Hassan, Tanveer Ahmed Siddiqi, Muhammad Imtiaz, Syed Inayatullah, Saba Naz

Flood management and control are essential to reduce economic and human life losses and to maintain the ecological condition. The intensity of occurrence of flood disasters constitutes a persistent and serious problem all round the world. Floods are growing in intensity and frequency year by year, producing adverse effects on the socioeconomic conditions of the country in question. This is particularly true for Pakistan since its birth. Serious scarcity of water in one season and disastrous floods in the other is a common observation. Vast rural and urban areas have to undergo a great disaster year by year. It seems that while some areas become less productive due to the deficiency of water. In the absence of any control measures a large amount of water is uselessly drained out in the sea. During the years when the river does not flow above the “fair irrigation level” for a sufficient time, canals are cut off from their water supply sooner and the entire irrigation system suffers. The arena of problems like correct assessment, proper storage, reliable control and judicious distribution of existing water masses among the provinces of Pakistan can be properly handled only by proper scientific research. For the prevention of major property damages and great agricultural losses, a detailed river flow study based on long-term predictions is very essential. For the study of uncertainty involved in real-time estimation and forecasting for the Pakistan’s rivers this paper stressing on the role of local climatological parameters on the IRS flow as these parameter influence the river flow extreme events (floods) and their management and control. For this purpose this paper giving a plan to design an early warning system and flood management and control plan.

Flood Management, Flood Control, Indus River, Climate Change

1. Rogers JJ, Feiss PG. People and the earth: basic issues in the sustainability of resources and environment. Cambridge University Press; 1998 Mar 13.
2. Hassan SA, Ansari MR. Hydro-climatic aspects of Indus River flow propagation. Arabian Journal of Geosciences. 2015 Dec 1;8(12):10977-82.
3. Minarik B, Martinka K. Reduction of uncertainties in the flood estimation in the Czechoslovak section of Danube river. InFlood Hydrology 1987 (pp. 187-195). Springer, Dordrecht.
4. Khan H, Hassan SA. Stochastic River Flow Modelling and Forecasting of Upper Indus Basin. Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences. 2015 Dec 18;11:630-6.
5. Shrestha BB, Okazumi T, Miyamoto M, Nabesaka S, Tanaka S, Sugiura A. Fundamental analysis for flood risk management in the selected river basins of Southeast Asia. Journal of Disaster Research. 2014 Oct 1;9(5):858-68.
6. PC S, Nakatani T, Misumi R. Hydrological Simulation of Small River Basins in Northern Kyushu, Japan, During the Extreme Rainfall Event of July 5–6, 2017. Journal of Disaster Research. 2018 Mar 20;13(2):396-409.
7. Lee D, Oh B, Kim H, Lee S, Chung G. Comparison of the hydro-climatological characteristics for the extra-ordinary flood induced by tropical cyclone in the selected river basins. Tropical Cyclone Research and Review. 2013 Feb 1;2(1):45-54.
8. Kacprzyk J. Multistage fuzzy control: a prescriptive approach.
9. 9, Hassan, S. A., Ph.D. Thesis: River flow modelling in view of climatic variability and management of floods in Pakistan’s ecology, University of Karachi, Pakistan (Part of research work done in Duke University, USA) 2011.
10. Khan FK. A geography of Pakistan: environment, people and economy. Oxford University Press; 1991.
11. Afzal, M. Pakistan flood management procedures including 1992 supper flood and its damage restoration, Water resources management directorate (WRMD) Hydrology and water management organization WAPDA, Lahore, Pakistan,1994.
12. Awan, AS. Methodology for environmental degradation and disaster, The 2nd APEIS Capacity Building Workshop on Integrated Environmental Monitoring of Asia-Pacific Region, 2007.
13. Archer DR, Fowler HJ. Spatial and temporal variations in precipitation in the Upper Indus Basin, global teleconnections and hydrological implications. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions. 2004;8(1):47-61.
14. Cannon F, Carvalho LM, Jones C, Hoell A, Norris J, Kiladis GN, Tahir AA. The influence of tropical forcing on extreme winter precipitation in the western Himalaya. Climate dynamics. 2017 Feb 1;48(3-4):1213-32.
15. Snelgrove AK. Geohydrology of the Indus River, West Pakistan. Sind University Press; 1967.
16. Shroder Jr JF, editor. Himalaya to the sea: geology, geomorphology and the Quaternary. Routledge; 2002 Sep 26.
17. Rahman M. A Geography of Sind Province, Pakistan. Karachi Geographers Association: distributors, Oxford University Press; 1975.
18. Hassan SA, Ansari MR. Nonlinear analysis of seasonality and stochasticity of the Indus River. Hydrological Sciences Journal–Journal des Sciences Hydrologiques. 2010 Mar 29;55(2):250-65.
19. Rehman H, Kamal A. Indus Basin river system-Flooding and flood mitigation. In8th International River Symposium 2005 Sep (pp. 2-11).
20. Awan SA. Pakistan: Flood Management-River Chenab from Marala to Khanki. Report on integrated flood management, Flood Forecasting Division, PMD. 2003.
21. Riaz M, Aziz A, Hussain S. Flood Forecasting of an Ungauged Trans-boundary Chenab River Basin Using Distributed Hydrological Model Integrated Flood Analysis System (IFAS). Pakistan Journal of Meteorology Vol. 2017 Jan;13(26).
22. Mirza, H. H. & Khan, R. A. Pakistan water sector strategy, executive summary. Ministry of Water and Power Office of the Chief Engineering Advisor/ Chairman Federal Flood Commission, 2002
23. Qaiser, A. H. Flood management in Pakistan. International European-Asian workshop on Ecosystem & Flood, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2000, June 27-29
24. Salas, J.D. & Siccardi, F. Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations. United States-Italy Research Workshop on Hydrometeorology, impacts, and management of extreme floods, held on,1995, Nov 13-17, WARREDOC (La Colombella), Perugia, Italy.