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Natural HazardsJournal of the InternationalSociety for the Prevention andMitigation of Natural Hazards ISSN 0921-030X Nat HazardsDOI 10.1007/s11069-011-9869-6

The Indus flood of 2010 in Pakistan: aperspective analysis using remote sensingdata

Kumar Gaurav, R. Sinha & P. K. Panda

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ORIGINAL PAPER

The Indus flood of 2010 in Pakistan: a perspectiveanalysis using remote sensing data

Kumar Gaurav • R. Sinha • P. K. Panda

Received: 26 January 2011 / Accepted: 27 May 2011! Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The Indus flood in 2010 was one of the greatest river disasters in recent history,which affected more than 14 million people in Pakistan. Although excessive rainfallbetween July and September 2010 has been cited as the major causative factor for thisdisaster, the human interventions in the river system over the years made this disaster acatastrophe. Geomorphic analysis suggests that the Indus River has had a very dynamicregime in the past. However, the river has now been constrained by embankments on bothsides, and several barrages have been constructed along the river. As a result, the river hasbeen aggrading rapidly during the last few decades due to its exceptionally high sedimentload particularly in reaches upstream of the barrages. This in turn has caused significantincrease in cross-valley gradient leading to breaches upstream of the barrages and inun-dation of large areas. Our flow accumulation analysis using SRTM data not only supportsthis interpretation but also points out that there are several reaches along the Indus River,which are still vulnerable to such breaches and flooding. Even though the Indus flood in2010 was characterized by exceptionally high discharges, our experience in working onHimalayan rivers and similar recent events in rivers in Nepal and India suggest that suchevents can occur at relatively low discharges. It is therefore of utmost importance toidentify such areas and plan mitigation measures as soon as possible. We emphasize therole of geomorphology in flood analysis and management and urge the river managers totake urgent steps to incorporate the geomorphic understanding of Himalayan rivers in rivermanagement plans.

Keywords Flood disaster ! Avulsion ! Embankment breaching ! Siltation !Himalayan rivers

K. Gaurav ! R. Sinha (&) ! P. K. PandaDepartment of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur,Kanpur, UP 208016, Indiae-mail: rsinha@iitk.ac.in

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1 Introduction

Rivers are one of the prime sources of fresh water and have played a major role in thedevelopment of human civilization. In recent years, rivers systems have been significantlyimpacted by human interventions as well as climate change. As a consequence of climaticchange, frequency and magnitude of occurrence of disastrous floods in Himalayan rivershave increased in past 2–3 decades (Dutta and Hearadth 2004; Shrestha 2008; Khan et al.2009). Human interventions through the construction of embankments, barrages, dams,land clearance, and landuse change etc. have also disturbed the river system in terms ofsediment load and their run-off, leading to more severe floods (Ali and De Boer 2007;Walling 2008; Sinha 2009). In 2010, heavy and spatially uneven rainfall during themonsoon period resulted in flooding in various parts of Pakistan. Heavy rainfall in theupstream reaches of the Indus River such as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistanfollowed by breaches of embankments and canals along the river course devastated mostparts of Pakistan. Flood trauma of the Indus started in mid-July of 2010 and continued tillearly September affecting the lives of more than 14 million people in Pakistan. Accordingto EM-DAT (2010) report, this flooding event of Indus River killed more than 1,961 peopleand damaged property worth US $ 9,500, 000. The UN estimated that the humanitariancrisis was much larger than the combined effects of the three worst natural disasters in thepast decade including the Asian tsunami and the major earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti.Recent increase in the frequency of floods in this region and large-scale devastation interms of human lives and loss of property has forced the planners and policy-makers torethink about the strategies of river management (Sinha 2010). Apart from heavy rainfall,flooding in the Himalayan rivers is strongly influenced by hydrology and sedimenttransport characteristics. Siltation is a major problem in rivers originating from themountainous terrain, and the rate of siltation is known to be quite high for the Himalayanrivers (Goswami 1985).

Further, flood control strategies on Himalayan rivers are primarily embankment based,which have not only altered the natural flow regime of the rivers but also affected the floodintensity, frequency, and pattern. Apart from the embankments along the river, construc-tion of various barrages across the river, unplanned construction of roads, bunds, and otherpublic utilities in the floodplain has severely affected the natural flow of the river system.As a consequence, rapid siltation of river bed, drainage congestion, and channel discon-nectivity have been reported in these regions (Sinha 2010; Jain and Tandon 2010). Inpresent scenario, the effectiveness of river control strategies through the construction ofbarrages and embankments along the river, especially for the Himalayan rivers that carryhigh sediment load is debatable. The Yellow River flood in 1996, the Kosi flood in 2008,and the Indus flood in 2010 are a few glaring examples of the failure of these structuresduring floods (Sinha 2009; Wang and Plate 2002). Construction of barrages and damsalong the river for flow regulation and water diversion has caused serious problem ofsediment trapping close to these structures and has also reduced the sediment fluxes indownstream reaches (Walling 2008).

One of the major requirements of flood disaster management is the real-timemonitoring of maximum flood extent for taking up immediate response, short- andlong-term recovery, and future mitigation activities (Wang 2004). The satellite remotesensing data, due their synoptic view and repetitivity coupled with the advent ofgeographic information system (GIS) techniques, have proved to be extremely effectivein flood inundation mapping and monitoring on real-time basis. The availability of avariety of active and passive sensors, operating in the visible, thermal, and microwave

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range of the electromagnetic spectrum has shown a great promise in the delineation offlood boundary and actual estimation of inundation area in a cost-effective manner(Sanyal and Lu 2004; Smith 1997). A couple of recent studies have highlighted the useof remote sensing and GIS techniques in flood risk evaluation of one of the flood-pronerivers, the Kosi in north Bihar plains, eastern India (Bapalu and Sinha 2005; Sinha2008) wherein an integrated approach using geomorphology, landuse/landcover,topography, and population density on a GIS platform provided a flood risk map forparts of the Kosi river.

This paper presents an analysis of the Indus floods that devastated a large part ofPakistan in July–September of 2010. A systematic analysis of hydro-meteorological datacoupled with satellite images and digital elevation models has provided a first-hand doc-umentation of the series of events that led to this disaster. We argue that an integrated riverbasin approach is crucial for flood management of such rivers, and local engineeringinterventions cannot provide sustainable solutions.

2 The Indus River

The Indus River (Fig. 1) is one of the largest rivers in the world in terms of itslength (3,180 km), drainage area (960,000 km2), and average annual discharge(7,610 m3/s). Out of the total drainage area, about 506,753 km2 of area lies in thesemiarid region of Pakistan and the rest lies in mountains and foothills (Hovius 1998;Khan et al. 2009). The Indus originates at an altitude of 5,486 m from the MountKailas range in Tibetan plateau on the northern side of Himalaya. The stretch from itsorigin to Guddu barrage in Pakistan is called upper Indus, and the stretch downstreamof the barrage is called lower Indus (Jain et al. 2007). The upper and lower parts of theIndus experience very diverse rainfall pattern and weather condition. The northernpart of the Indus basin is mainly characterized by high mountains and glaciers andcold-arid climatic conditions, whereas the lower part of the Indus basin experiencessubtropical to tropical climate as it reaches the Arabian Sea (Ali and De Boer 2003).Barring the mountainous region of the basin, the entire Indus valley falls in the driestpart of the subcontinent. Much of the flow of the Indus River originates from eitherglacier melt or monsoon rainfall. Summer monsoon and western disturbance in latewinter and early spring are responsible for high precipitation in the Indus basin. Thebasin receives the highest rainfall during the monsoon season (July–September), andthis often causes major flooding in Pakistan (Inam et al. 2007; Ali and De Boer 2007).The average annual precipitation of Indus region varies from 125 mm over the lowerplains to about 500 mm in the upstream in Lahore (Khan et al. 2009; Inam et al.2007).

Much of the flow of Indus originates in the mountains of the Karakoram and Himalaya,and the river transports large volumes of suspended sediment. The average annual sedi-ment load of 291 million tonnes/year of the Indus ranks this river as one of the highestsediment load carrying rivers in the world. The sediment-laden water has created manywater resource management problems, mainly in the upper Indus basin, and the con-struction of embankments, dam, and barrages has made the situation worse. At manylocations, rapid siltation of river bed has been reported in reaches upstream of the barrage.For example, the Tarbela reservoir was accumulating sediments at the rate of 200 milliontonnes/year during the nineties (Sloff 1997) (Table 1).

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3 Data used and methods

This paper emphasizes the use of geomorphological and topographic data for understandingthe causal factors of floods. Given the availability of a variety of satellite-based images anddigital elevation data, it is now possible to examine the geomorphological and topographiccharacteristics of the region, and therefore, such studies must use these data. In the presentstudy, we have used Landsat ETM image of year 2009 to delineate major geomorphologicalunits of the study area. The effectiveness of the Landsat TM and ETM images due to theirmoderate spatial resolution and wide spectral sensitivity in visible as well as in thermal

Fig. 1 The Indus River in Pakistan. Major cities and locations of important barrages along the Indus Riverare also shown

Table 1 Drainage basin characteristics and hydrology of some Himalayan rivers

Parameter Indus Ganga Kosi

Catchment area (103 km2) 960 1,073 101

Total length (km) 3,180 2,700 1,216

Average annual discharge (m3/s) 7,610 15,000 2,236

Annual sediment load at river mouth (million tonnes/year) 291 1,670 43

Discharge/area 8 14 20

Sediment yield (million tonnes/year/km2) 0.3 1.56 0.43

Source: Hovius (1998), Jain et al. (2007), Sinha (2008)

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range of electromagnetic spectrum has been addressed by various authors (Sanyal and Lu2004; Smith 1997; Townsend and Walsh 1998), particularly in the identification of fluvialgeomorphological features, flood inundation mapping, and monitoring. In present study, forthe purpose of delineation of floodplain, paleochannels, and other geomorphic features, acombination of band 7 (Thermal), band 5 (SWIR), and band 3 (Red) was used. The specialcharacteristics of complete absorption in SWIR band due to water/moisture proved veryuseful in discriminating moisture area from the dry land surface.

Further, the SRTM digital elevation data were analyzed for understanding topographicdistribution and channel network. Topographic sections were generated across the river tocompare the relative elevation differences between the river bed and the adjoiningfloodplain. Using the digital elevation model (DEM) as an input, flow direction, flowaccumulation path, and channel network around the Sukkur barrage region were generatedusing ArcHydro tools in ArcGIS environment. Flow accumulation map was generated withthe help of flow direction map, which shows the orientation that water will flow away inany eight possible directions in a single grid (Quan et al. 2010). The basic assumption offlow accumulation grid is that water will flow upward to downward, based on which thealgorithm calculates the potential of accumulation of water in each individual grid. Theoutput cell with high accumulation shows the area of concentrated flow, and it was furtherused to define channel network. This analysis provided important insights to the existingcross-valley gradient vis-a-vis down-valley gradient along the river.

4 Results and discussion

4.1 Geomorphic analysis

Figure 2 shows a simplified geomorphic map of a part of the Indus River basin downstreamof Sukkur barrage prepared from Landsat image of 2009. The river has a moderatelysinuous course in this reach and is embanked on both sides barring a large gap along thewestern embankment. The main channel belt of the Indus River shows frequent abandonedmeanders. The embankment on both eastern and western sides runs very close to thepresent course of the river. The area outside the western as well as eastern embankmentshas been mapped as inactive floodplain as this is generally not flooded constrained by theembankment. There is a wide floodplain on the eastern side, which is in turn bounded bydry sand field. The western side has a wide floodplain in the upper reaches, but the riverruns close to the Kirthar Range in the lower reaches and has not developed any floodplainhere. Apart from the river embankments, several canals shoot off from the Sukkur barrageon either sides and run parallel to the river. A highly sinuous channel runs all along the firsteastern canal, which is interpreted as a seepage channel.

The geomorphic map of the parts of the Indus River plains provides important insightsto the river regime. Frequent abandoned meanders and several paleochannels mapped inthe active and inactive floodplains suggest a dynamic regime of the river in the past. Thepresent-day floodplain confined within the embankments is much narrower compared withthat in pre-embankment stage, and this has significantly modified the river regime. Atplaces, the active floodplain width is less than 5 km (e.g., downstream of the MancharLake), and such narrow reaches, apart from the barrages, have caused severe constriction inflow that has in turn led to aggradation in the channel belt. A prominent seepage channelalong the eastern canal cuts across the canal at several places and approaches the easternembankment suggesting its subsurface connectivity with the main Indus River. This

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connectivity may be significantly pronounced during high flows in the river and mayincrease the cross-valley gradient of the main river (discussed later) leading to breach ofthe embankment.

4.2 Hydro-meteorological analysis

The hydro-meteorological data used for the analysis included rainfall (July–August) andflood discharges at barrages. The 2010 flood in Indus started in July and continued till earlySeptember following heavy rainfall in the upper catchment. Analysis of the rainfall datapublished by Pakistan Metrological Department suggests that the rainfall at many stationsin NWFP, Punjab, and Sindh regions during the month of July and August of 2010 wasmuch higher than the monthly averages at these locations (Fig. 3). For example, a total of450 mm of rainfall was recorded in July 2010 in Saidu Sharif area of NWFP that wasapproximately three times higher than the monthly average at this site. A similar pattern ofrainfall was also observed during August in D.I.Khan, Khanpur, and Larkana regions ofNWFP, Punjab, and Sindh Provinces, respectively.

As a result of such extreme rainfall, the Indus carried very high discharge during thisperiod and flow at several barrages along the Indus, namely Taunsa, Guddu, Sukkur, andKotri barrages, not just exceeded the discharges at danger levels (typically bankfulllevels) but also came very close to ‘designed capacity’ (defined as the maximum dis-charge that is likely to pass through the barrage for a given probability of occurrence) forthe barrages. Further, this swollen water of Indus generated a tremendous lateral pressure

Fig. 2 Geomorphic map of the parts of the Indus River basin based on Landsat ETM data. Note that theriver is embanked on both sides that have constrained the flow significantly

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on both sides of its embankments. As a result, breaches in embankments and canalsoccurred at various places, e.g., upstream of Taunsa barrage on 3 August, Tori protectivebund between the Guddu and Sukkur barrage on 7 August, and Katcha embankment nearKotri barrage on 24 August (see Fig. 1 for locations). It is important to note that the dateof breach matched closely with the period of maximum flow recorded at the barrages(Fig. 4).

As discussed earlier, most of these reaches have been aggrading quite rapidly due tohigh sediment flux and confinement due to embankments and particularly in reachesupstream of the barrages. A decline of *85% in sediment load and annual discharge of theRiver Indus was recorded between 1930 and 1967 after the construction of Mangla Dam onthe Jhelum River (Milliman et al. 1984; Mimura 2008). A similar decline was alsoobserved after the construction of the Tarbela Dam on the main Indus close to Darband in1974 (Sloff 1997). This decline of sediment load suggests aggradation of the reachesupstream of the barrage thereby decreasing the carrying capacity of the river. Apart fromvarious barrages and dams, the construction of embankments and dyke along the Indus hasalso contributed in siltation of the main channel. The lower reaches of the Indus is confinedbetween embankments and levees, which has caused aggradation of the main channel andrise of river bed. A recent report (Arifeen 2010) suggests that presently only 52 of 65 gatesof the Sukkur barrage are operational due to poor maintenance and heavy siltation near thebarrage, and this has reduced the effective design capacity of the barrage from 1.5 millioncusecs to 900,000 cusecs only. This has certainly increased the risk of breaching of theembankment and flooding in the reaches upstream of the barrage.

Fig. 3 Spatial distribution of rainfall in various regions of Pakistan during the month of July and August,2010 (a) NWFP, (b) Punjab, and (c) Sindh (Source: Pakistan Meteorological Department 2010a, b)

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4.3 Flow accumulation analysis using SRTM

Figure 5 shows the flow accumulation map for the study window that was generated usingthe SRTM digital elevation model, which primarily provides the path of concentrated flowin the region. The output cell with high accumulation shows the area of concentrated flow(see dotted lines in Fig. 5) that was further utilized to define channel network (see solidlines in Fig. 5). Flow accumulation analysis for the study area clearly shows a veryprominent flow path, apart from the main channel outside the eastern as well as the westernembankment close to the Sukkur barrage. On the western side, a couple of potential flowpaths exist upstream of the Sukkur barrage (see F1 in Fig. 5), which connect to the NaraValley Drain running through Larkana, Mehar, and Johi regions of Sindh (See Fig. 1 forlocations) before joining the main channel close to Manchar Lake (Fig. 5). It is importantto note here that these flow paths are based on the SRTM data acquired in the year 2000. Itseems that this flow path became stronger through time, and a part of the Indus channelavulsed into this during 2010 flood after the breach of Tori protective bound between theGuddu and Sukkur barrage. Figure 6 shows the progressive development of the avulsionchannel between July 19 and August 7, 2010, which resulted in inundation of the adjacentareas including the important Harappan site and Mohen-jo-daro and finally drained intoManchar Lake. The new avulsion channel was *350 km long and carried a major part ofthe flow into the lake, which in turn was flooded extensively.

Several prominent flow paths are noted outside the eastern marginal embankmentimmediately upstream and downstream of Sukkur (see F2 in Fig. 5). Some of these connectto the Nara canal, and others are running almost parallel to the main Indus River. Withcontinued aggradation of the reach upstream of the Sukkur barrage, some of these flowpaths may become stronger in future and may get connected to the main channel duringhigh floods or due to a breach near the eastern marginal embankment upstream of the

Tori protective bund (breached on 7 Aug.’10)

Eastern embankment(breached on 3 Aug.’10)

4 Aug.’10

7 Aug.’1024 Aug.’10

7 Aug.’10Katcha embankment(breached on 24 Aug.’10)

Fig. 4 Inflow discharges at different barrages on the Indus River on different dates during the month ofAugust, 2010. Major breaches occurred upstream of these barrages close to these dates. Design dischargesfor these barrages are also plotted along with discharges at danger levels (typically the bankfull level)

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Sukkur barrage. Under such a scenario, the main Indus water may flank the easternembankment, and the resulting floods may be disastrous as most of this region is low lyingand the cities of Nawabsah, Sanghar, Mirpur-khas, and Kalohi would be threatened.

Figure 5 also shows two cross-sections across the river upstream and anotherdownstream of the Sukkur barrage based on SRTM digital elevation data of the year2000. It is remarkable to note that the river bed is several meters above the surrounding

Fig. 5 Digital elevation model (DEM) of the study area generated from SRTM data. The solid lines showthe Indus River and other channels along with the position of the eastern and western embankments. Thedotted lines are the flow accumulation paths generated from the SRTM data, and solid lines are the existingchannel network

1. SukkurBarrage

2. Mehar

3. Dadu

4. MancharLake

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 6 The Indus River flooding as seen on successive images between July and September, 2010. A breachoccurred on the western flank of the river, and new avulsion channel carried a major part of the flow beforedraining into the Manchar Lake (Source: NASA Earth observatory 2010)

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floodplain in both the sections although the actual elevation may be debatable due to lowresolution of the SRTM data. However, this supports our earlier observation that theriver bed has been aggrading fast in recent years. Such rivers are typically referred as‘superelevated’ rivers (Bryant et al. 1995) and are considered to be prone to avulsion. Itis obvious that the present course of the river is strongly constrained by the embank-ments and swings between eastern and western embankments in different reaches. Thisalso explains the development of cross-valley gradient and flow paths transverse to theriver.

4.4 Data integration and synthesis

Our first-order analysis suggests that the causative factors of flooding in the Indus River in2010 can be grouped as: (a) excessive rainfall and overbank flooding, (b) breach ofembankment and inundation, and (c) avulsion (rapid shifting) of rivers and flooding. Thecontrol of excessive rainfall is more than obvious, and the atmospheric scientists have alsotermed this as an ‘unusual’ event (Dutt 2010). The influence of engineering structures suchas the barrages and embankments certainly compounded the problem. The Indus is a highsediment load carrying river, and these structures have trapped large quantities of sedi-ments within the channel belt thereby raising the river bed considerably during the last fewdecades. The increased cross-valley gradient created the flow paths on both sides of theembankment, which eventually resulted in breaches at several points. The poor mainte-nance of the embankments could have further worsened the problem. It is important to notehere that such breaches could occur at much lower discharges as well, and therefore, theidentification of the vulnerable points and their strengthening should be taken up imme-diately. Our flow path analysis based on SRTM data of 2,000 has identified some of thevulnerable points but a high resolution latest topographic data would be extremely helpfulto identify such points more accurately.

The Indus flood disaster of 2010 has close parallels with the Kosi floods in August2008, which occurred in the eastern India. Like the Indus, the Kosi flood was alsotriggered by a breach in the eastern embankment at Kusaha in Nepal, 12 km upstream ofthe Kosi barrage. This breach, *1.2 km long, resulted in a major avulsion of the channelon to the fan surface, and the maximum shift was recorded to be *120 km (Sinha2010). Like the Indus, the Kosi also is a very high sediment load-carrying river, theconstruction of embankment and barrage had resulted in the rise of river bed level, andthe river has been flowing in ‘superelevated’ condition in several reaches. As such, theriver was close to avulsion threshold at several places, and the poor maintenance ofthe embankments added to the problem. One major difference between the Indus and theKosi disaster was, however, that the Kosi breach occurred at much lower discharge(*144,000 cusecs) compared with the design discharge (950,000 cusecs) for the barrageand the embankment. In contrast, the unprecedented rains in the catchment area pro-duced the Indus flood. However, the breach at Kusaha in Nepal still resulted in aflooding of a very large area in Nepal and North Bihar in India, and more than 3 millionpeople were affected by this disaster. In the following year, the local engineers executeda major restoration project was to put the river back into its pre-avulsion course.However, the physical conditions that led to this disaster remain the same. Our efforts toevaluate the flood risk of the Kosi River due to its avulsive nature are continuing, and weare currently pursuing an integrated research to understand the causative factors and tofind long-term solutions to this problem.

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5 Concluding remarks

River systems are highly dynamic and integrated system, and any kind of human inter-vention on its natural process can easily propagate and impact the entire system. The recentflood in the Indus was certainly one of the biggest ‘‘human’’ disasters in recent years andwas a stark sequel of the Kosi disaster in 2008 in India. These repeated events have sent outa strong signal that our flood management strategies are questionable and our preparednessto such disasters is far too inadequate. Although the extreme rainfall has been cited as themost important causal factor for the Indus floods in the media and elsewhere, it isunderstandable that a river like the Indus could have easily carried the resulting dischargehad there been no major reduction in its carrying capacity due to its confinement within theembankments and obstacles due to the barrages. This disaster has reiterated the urgent needto move from ‘river control’ to ‘river management’ strategies, which necessitates theappreciation of the Himalayan river processes and particularly dynamics of these systemsunder sediment-charged conditions. We must carefully analyze the impact of engineeringstructures on river system in terms of natural equilibrium under dynamic conditions. Cost–benefit analysis (long term) of major interventions in the river basins and their utility in thepresent context should be the next step, including the impact on livelihood and ecology.Alternatives to embankments for flood management must be revisited with an emphasis onthe ‘living with the floods’ concept; this may include floodplain zoning and other non-structural approaches. Basin-scale flood risk maps based on scientific data and reasoningare the needs of the hour; such GIS-based, interactive maps may utilize historical dataanalysis as well as modeling approaches and can be linked to an online database and floodwarning system. Future research in this direction should be scientifically rewarding as wellas socially relevant.

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