Informatics Publishing Limited

Subimal Ghosh ¹, Subhankar Karmakar ², Anamitra Saha ¹, Mohit Prakash Mohanty ³, Shees Ali ¹, Satya Kiran Raju ⁴, Vrinda Krishnakumar ¹, Maneesha Sebastian ¹, Manasa Ranjan Behera ¹, R. Ashrit ⁵, P. L. N. Murty ⁶, K. Srinivas ⁶, B. Narasimhan ⁷, Tune Usha ⁴, M. V. Ramana Murthy ⁴, P. Thiruvengadam ¹, J. Indu ¹, D. Thirumalaivasan ⁸, John P. George ⁵, S. Gedam ⁹, A. B. Inamdar ⁹, B. S. Murty ⁷, P. P. Mujumdar ¹⁰, M. Mohapatra ¹¹, Arun Bhardwaj ¹², Swati Basu ¹², Shailesh Nayak ¹³

Affiliations
1 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, IN
2 Interdisciplinary Program in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, IN
3 Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, IN
4 National Centre for Coastal Research, NIOT Campus, Velacherry–Tambaram Main Road, Pallikaranai, Chennai 600 100, IN
5 National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India, A-50, Sector-62, Noida 201 309, IN
6 Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Pragathi Nagar (BO), Nizampet (SO), Hyderabad 500 090, IN
7 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600 036, IN
8 Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University, Chennai 600 040, IN
9 Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400 076, IN
10 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560 012, IN
11 India Meteorological Department, New Delhi 110 003, IN
12 Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Vigyan Bhavan Annexe, Maulana Azad Road, New Delhi 110 011, IN
13 National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru 560 012, IN

Abstract

Floods are the most common and recurring natural hazards faced by humans since time immemorial. They pose a severe threat to the population, environment and economy in many places across the world, especially urban areas. Urbanization caused due to increasing migration into the floodplains has substantially increased the trend of devastation due to floods in a developing country like India. In Chennai and the surrounding suburban areas, torrential rainfall associated with low-pressure systems engulfed the city during December 2015, affecting more than 4 million people along with economic damages that cost around 3 billion USD.

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