Afghanistan Flood Hazard Mapping

Every year, Afghanistan’s violent floods make thousands homeless and kill scores of people. Additionally, these floods destroy houses, bridges, roads and other essential infrastructure. Until now, it was not known where these floods would occur; however by developing a new parsimonious inundation model, the Afghanistan Flood Hazard Map (AFG-FHM) has been created. The model does not rely on advanced algorithmic and data requirements often only available in the developed world; it can therefore be employed in other developing countries. In addition to relief operations, the AFG-FHM is supporting the planning for NATO/ISAF on strategic, operational and tactical levels. It can help the UN, Red Cross and NGOs to save millions of dollars in investment by locating safe construction and flood mitigation sites. This book describes the methodology employed to create the AFG-FHM, as it is a robust method to generate extreme inundation outlines. It further gives a comprehensive overview of the Afghanistan flood crisis and concludes with an overview of the flood analyses, such as landmine migration and roads with flood risk, which can be performed in developing countries.