International Journal of Science and Technology (IJST)

Trend and Impact Assessment of Floods and Cyclones in Coastal Odisha

The state of Odisha situated on the Bay of Bengal periodically experiences loss of life and severe damages from occurrence of various natural hazards such as cyclonic storms, floods, heavy rains, thunderstorms, hail storms, heat wave, droughts etc. The present study aims to find out the degree of impact caused due to the occurrence of flood and cyclone for last five decades along the coastal districts of Odisha. To find out the trend and impact of floods and cyclones on socio-economic variables the UNDPs normalisation method was used to find out the damage index of the taken variables and then the Composite Damage Index (CDI) was obtained by combining all the indices for composite damage assessment of the study area. The district level variation in the impact of flood and cyclone along the Odisha coast shows that the Cuttack district which doesn’t shares any coast line in the Bay of Bengal still ranks one in the Composite Damage Index. Many studies have been done before on the occurrence and impact of natural hazards for the coastal districts of Odisha, but none of the authors have tried to make the comparative spatial-temporal analysis of the damages done by the natural hazards along the coastal Odisha. Therefore, the present paper will surely provide additional information to the policy makers on the changing behavior of the natural hazards over the time and space with regards to its occurrence and impact level.