Simple Method for Assessing Spread of Flood Prone Areas under Historical and Future Rainfall in the Upper Citarum Watershed

Abstract

From 1931 to 2010 the flood frequency in Upper Citarum Watershed had increased sharply indicating the decline of the wateshed quality. With the change of climate, risk of the flood may get worse. This study aims to determine effective rainfall that caused flooding and to evaluate the impact of future rainfall changes on the flood prone areas. Effective rainfall which contributes to direct runoff (DRO) and leads to flooding was determined using regression equation relating the DRO and cumulative rainfall of a number of consecutive days. Mapping the flood prone areas was developed using the GIS techniques. Results showed that the effective rainfall which caused flooding was the rainfall accumulation for four consecutive days before occurrence of peak of DRO. The percentage of accuracy between estimated and actual flood maps was about 76.9%. According to historical rainfall, the flood prone areas spreaded at right and left directions of the Upstream Citarum River. If this area experiences the climate change, the frequency and flood extents will increase. This study can only identify locations and possibility of flood occurrence but it cannot demonstrate widespread of flood inundation precisely. However, this simple approach can evaluate the flood frequency and intensity quite well.

Keywords

• effective rainfall
• direct runoff
• flood prone area
• climate change