Estimation of the flood vulnerability index (FVI) for Alexandria city-Egypt: A case study

Abstract

Climate change and urbanization are likely to increase the flood vulnerability of cities, which causes damage and interruption of services to the communities. The objective of this study is to estimate the Flood Vulnerability Index (FVI) for Alexandria City to assist decision-makers in developing priority urban flood plans and identifying methods for reducing flood risk. In this study, the FVI is estimated through three components: social, physical, and environmental. Eleven major indicators are used to represent these three components, and they are classified according to three flood factors: exposure, susceptibility, and resilience. Geographic information system (GIS), and remote sensing (RS) are used to obtain the required data and develop maps for identifying the significant urban flood indictors. The study area is divided into sixteen zones regarding its administrative classification. The overall FVI is estimated for each of the sixteen zones based on social, physical, and environmental components. Population, population density, population access to sanitation, and warning system are used as the four indicators for the social component, whereas the four indicators used for the physical components, are proximity to stream, elevation, rainfall amount, and slope. The environmental component is evaluated by using three indicators, land use, urban growth, and flood recovery time. The FVI assigns a number between 0 and 1, indicating relatively low to high urban flood vulnerability. The findings demonstrate that FVI offers an efficient way to assess flood vulnerability and obtain appropriate adaptation choices.