MULTI-HAZARD RISK ASSESSMENT OF GODAWARI MUNICIPALITY, NEPAL

Multi-hazards pose significant risks to the communities and critical infrastructures. The interaction of multi-hazards results in compounding consequences that can exhaust the functions of the local governments. Unplanned urbanization, population growth, and climate change further limit the municipalities' resources and capacities. In order to manage and reduce the residual, current, and future multi-hazard risks followed by resilient development, the local governments require robust risk-informed spatial planning, considering the prevalent hazards, land use, elements-at-risk, and its associated vulnerabilities. Multi-hazard risk assessment was conducted in Godawari Municipality, of Kailali district of Nepal. The aim was to develop a methodology for analyzing the major natural hazards prevalent in the municipality, assess the vulnerability of the communities and infrastructure to the major natural hazards, determine their degree of exposure to future hazardous events, and develop risk profiles as a basis for the land use planning processes. Floods, landslides, and earthquakes were the major hazards of the municipality that were modelled. Intensive field surveys were conducted to collect historical records of disasters and their impacts on elements-at-risk, such as buildings, agricultural lands, roads, and populations. An open-source, web-based spatial decision supporting tool called RiskChanges (http://riskchanges.org/) was used to analyze the exposure, loss, and risk. Different hazard layers were overlaid with available elements-at-risk layers to obtain their exposures. Losses were calculated for each hazard type, frequency class, and exposed elements‐at‐risk combination by multiplying their vulnerabilities, and spatial probabilities. Risks were presented in terms of Average Annual Loss (AAL) for all the elements-at-risk for various return periods. The combined multi-hazard risk map indicated 26.65% of the area as a high-risk zone, 49.9% as a moderate-risk zone, and 23.42% as a low-risk zone. Interpretation of the risk assessment results is expected to assist the local government in identifying the areas suitable for future developments and allocate the resources efficiently to build back better.