Evaluation of risk potential of industries and natural hazards in the wards of Hyderabad, India–AHP multi-criteria modeling perspective using remote sensing and GIS

Abstract

The study aimed at evaluating the combined risk potential of various industrial and natural factors at micro level in the municipal wards of Hyderabad (include 150 wards and 3 other administrative areas), which is the capital of the state of Telangana, India. High resolution imagery was used to precisely map the locations of different categories of industries (chemical, manufacturing and mining) and influence of natural factors (earth quakes, cyclones, floods, landslides and fire) across the Hyderabad city, whereas the GIS technology was used for the integrated assessment of all the spatial information layers thus extracted. Analytical Hierarchy Processing (AHP) multi-criteria modeling technique was used for the overall assessment and mapping of the risk potential comprehensively at the municipal ward level. The results indicate that majority of the wards (82 and 51 no’s respectively) covering an area of 676.23 km2 are susceptible to industrial risk, therefore categorized as ‘Poor’ and ‘Very Poor’. In terms of the natural risk, ‘flood’ is found to be the most disastrous event which has high influence. Evaluation of combined risk due to natural factors indicate that out of total 153 ward areas 108 wards covering 620.08 km2 are found with very low risk and rated as ‘Excellent’. Only 17 wards are found with high risk potential, therefore rated as ‘Very Poor’ and 10 wards as ‘Poor’, which are mostly confined to the eastern and northern fringe parts of the city of Hyderabad.