Assessment of climate change effects on flood risk by using GIS and remote sensing (case study: Kabul, Afghanistan)

Geospatial technology such as Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System is a crucial tool in environmental monitoring such as water resource management, pollutions monitoring, and disaster management in the 21st century. In the present decade, Climate change is one of the most serious and critical issues which has hurt the environmental processes and living things, which include rapid urban floods and environmental degradation. Kabul City is one of the urban areas which is hugely affected by flood events every year. This study aims to assess the occurrence of flood damages in Kabul city and its surrounding areas between the years of 2014-2019. This will assist in planning, modeling, and design of flood risk management and measures of protection, managing emergency in real-time and recovering from flood events, which in turn lowers the environmental damage. In this thesis, Assessment of Climate Change Effects on flood risk on the city of Kabul has been done via Using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies. Further, the indexes of Normalized difference water index (NDWI) and Flood-pixel has been developed by image processing software (ENVI), which is one of the best methods for open water and Floodwater features delineation. A flood risk analysis map has been developed in the ArcMap software. In conclusion, the data gathered comparatively from climate map analysis between the years (2009-2019) and satellite imagery analysis between the years (2014- 2019) shows that some parts of the city have been under huge threat of flood occurrences, and this risk is increasing and will become an even greater threat for the Kabul city in the future. Hence, I recommend structural and non-structural measures for the control, prevention, and reduction of the flood risk level in the city of Kabul. RS and GIS easily offer relatively cheap, quick, and easily accessible data for researchers about the flood occurrence, which lowers the cost of flood risk management and monitoring.