Abstract
The study area is 56-km coastal zone of Chennai district of the Tamil Nadu state, southeast coast of India. The coastline, which includes tourist resorts, ports, hotels, fishing villages, and towns, has experienced threats from many disasters such as storms, cyclones, floods, tsunami, and erosion. This was one of the worst affected area during 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and during 2008 Nisha cyclone. The present study aims to develop a Coastal Vulnerability Index for the Chennai coast using eight relative risk variables to know the high and low vulnerable areas, areas of inundation due to future SLR, and land loss due to coastal erosion. Both conventional and remotely sensed data were used and analyzed with the aid of the remote sensing and geographic information system tools. Zones of vulnerability to coastal natural hazards of different magnitude (high, medium, and low) are identified and shown on a map. Coastal regional elevation, near-shore bathymetry, and socio-economic conditions have been considered as additional important variables. This study revealed that 11.01 km of the coastline has low vulnerability, 16.66 km has medium vulnerability, and 27.79 km is highly vulnerable in the study area, showing the majority of coastline is prone to erosion. The map prepared for the Chennai coast can be used by the state and district administration involved in the disaster mitigation and management plan and also as a tool in planning a new facility and for insurance purpose.
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Acknowledgments
We express our gratitude to the Director, National Institute of Oceanography for the encouragement. The authors would like to thank the Global Land Cover Facility, http://www.landcover.org for the Landsat TM, ETM+ data, and USGS for the making available the Digital Shoreline Analysis Software (DSAS) on their website. This is the contribution number 5189 of National Institute of Oceanography, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Goa, India. We appreciate the reviews and comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript provided by anonymous peer reviewers.
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Arun Kumar, A., Kunte, P.D. Coastal vulnerability assessment for Chennai, east coast of India using geospatial techniques. Nat Hazards 64, 853–872 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0276-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0276-4