Vulnerability indices of A GLOF-prone community: A case study of Sosot Village, Ghizar District, Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan
Main Article Content
Abstract
One of the major impacts of global climate change, GLOF (Glacial Lake outburst flood) has increased in frequency throughout the world due to rise in temperature. Pakistan has also seen this upswing of GLOF in Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya region increasing the human and environment susceptibility in affected area. Sosot, a village which has faced some devastating GLOF events in the past, is taken as a case in this study. In 2012, the GLOF event took place which caused monetary damage of around 100 million Pakistan rupees. The detailed analysis shows that high temperature was the most important GLOF triggering factor. At present, despite some social cohesion and education, this progress-oriented community is unable to strengthen economically. The GLOF proneness and recurrence causes loss of infrastructure, livestock, and agriculture. The vulnerability of the village to GLOF is estimated using Flood Vulnerability Index (FVI) based on four components as social component, economic component, environmental and physical factors. The social vulnerability has come out to be 0.506, economic vulnerability is 0.949, environmental vulnerability is 0.613 and the physical vulnerability is 1. The total vulnerability of Sosot village is calculated to be 0.767 which indicates that this village is highly vulnerable to GLOF events. All the components are playing an important role in increasing the vulnerability, but the most important components are economic and physical which are making the village highly vulnerable to GLOF event. Therefore, there is a dire need for suggested structural and non-structural measures to be taken for this community to decrease vulnerability to GLOF.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
Rahmstorf, S., & Coumou, D. (2011). Increase of extreme events in a warming world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(44), 17905-17909. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1101766108
Stocker, T. (2014). Climate change 2013: the physical science basis: Working Group I contribution to the Fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge university press.
Robinson, A., Lehmann, J., Barriopedro, D., Rahmstorf, S., & Coumou, D. (2021). Increasing heat and rainfall extremes now far outside the historical climate. Climate and Atmospheric Science, 4(1), 45. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00202-w
Kesikoğlu, M. H., Cicekli, S. Y., & Kaynak, T. (2020). The identification of seasonal coastline changes from landsat 8 satellite data using artificial neural networks and k-nearest neighbor. Turkish Journal of Engineering, 4(1), 47-56. https://doi.org/10.31127/tuje.599359
Barnett, T. P., Adam, J. C., & Lettenmaier, D. P. (2005). Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions. Nature, 438(7066), 303-309. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04141
Oerlemans, J. (2005). Extracting a climate signal from 169 glacier records. Science, 308(5722), 675-677. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1107046
Field, C. B. (2012). Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation: special report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. Cambridge University Press.
Din, K., Tariq, S., Mahmood, A., & Rasul, G. (2014). Temperature and precipitation: GLOF triggering indicators in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan. Pakistan Journal of Meteorology, 10(20), 39-56.
Gündüz, F., & Zeybekoğlu, U. (2024). Analysis of temperature and precipitation series of Hirfanli Dam Basin by Mann Kendall, Spearman’s Rho and Innovative Trend Analysis. Turkish Journal of Engineering, 8(1), 11-19. https://doi.org/10.31127/tuje.1177522
Chaudhry, Q. U. Z., Mahmood, A., Rasul, G., & Afzaal, M. (2009). Climate change indicators of Pakistan. Pakistan Meteorological Department.
Rasul, G., Chaudhry, Q. Z., Mahmood, A., Hyder, K. W., & Dahe, Q. (2011). Glaciers and glacial lakes under changing climate in Pakistan. Pakistan Journal of Meteorology, 8(15).
Bajracharya, S. R., Mool, P. K., & Shrestha, B. R. (2007). Impact of climate change on Himalayan glaciers and glacial lakes: case studies on GLOF and associated hazards in Nepal and Bhutan, 12. Kathmandu: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
Balica, S. F., Douben, N., & Wright, N. G. (2009). Flood vulnerability indices at varying spatial scales. Water Science and Technology, 60(10), 2571-2580. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2009.183
Balica, S., & Wright, N. G. (2010). Reducing the complexity of the flood vulnerability index. Environmental Hazards, 9(4), 321-339. https://doi.org/10.3763/ehaz.2010.0043
Alfaloji, M. (2022). Water budget estimation using remote sensing observations and GLDAS-CLSM for Limpopo River Basin. Advanced Remote Sensing, 2(2), 85-93.
Khatun, M. M., Chakraborty, D., & Alam, I. (2022). Clarifying the impact of climatic parameters on vegetation in Moulvibazar district. Turkish Journal of Engineering, 6(3), 211-222. https://doi.org/10.31127/tuje.930293
Haeberli, W., & Whiteman, C. (2015). Snow and ice-related hazards, risks, and disasters: a general framework. In Snow and Ice-Related Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, 1-34. Academic Press.
Al Kalbani, K., & Rahman, A. A. (2021). 3D city model for monitoring flash flood risks in Salalah, Oman. International Journal of Engineering and Geosciences, 7(1), 17-23. https://doi.org/10.26833/ijeg.857971
ICIMOD. (2011). Glacial lakes and glacial lake outburst floods in Nepal. Kathmandu: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
Carey, M. (2005). Living and dying with glaciers: people's historical vulnerability to avalanches and outburst floods in Peru. Global and Planetary Change, 47(2-4), 122-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2004.10.007
Haeberli, W., Huggel, C., Paul, F., Zemp, M., Shroder, J. F., James, L. A., ... & Clague, J. J. (2013). Glacial responses to climate change. Treatise on Geomorphology. San Diego (USA): Elsevier, 152-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-374739-6.00350-X