Flood Risk Assessment of Communities to Flood Hazards in Central Niger Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

Agwumafa OF, Weli VE, Eludoyin OS

The study examined the risk assessment of communities in the Central Niger Delta, Nigeria with a view to employing analytical hierarchical ranking process technique. The study considered the landuse, elevation, soil texture and proximity to active river channels as factors determining flood vulnerability (FV) while factors such as accessibility, social infrastructure, water supply, agriculture, commercial activities and disaster preparedness of communities were used for flood exposure (FE) using purposive sampling technique. Both FV and FE were combined together using UNION Module of ArcGIS 10.5 to produce flood risk map of the Central Niger Delta. Descriptive statistics using frequency and percentages were used for the data analysis. Findings revealed that 20.25%, 51.66% and 28.09% of the entire study area were lowly vulnerable, moderately vulnerable and highly vulnerable to flood. Similarly, 0.3%, 45.7% and 54.8% were lowly exposed, moderately exposed and highly exposed to flood. However, 14.3%, 28.3% and 57.4% of the study area had low flood risk, moderate flood risk and high flood risk respectively. The study concluded that majority of the area in the Central Niger Delta is risky to flood. It is recommended among others that channelization and dredging of River Niger Creeks in the study area are important in order for the river to accommodate more volume of water whenever there is excessive rainfall.

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