Use of Remote Sensing and Gis for Flood Hazard Mapping in Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand

Throughout the human history floods have been an integral part of the civilization. Still men have not quite coped well to live with floods. Flood hazards result from a combination of physical exposure and human vulnerability to a geophysical process. Physical exposure reflects the type of flood events that can occur and their statistical pattern at a particular site while human vulnerability reflects key socioeconomic factors such as the number of people at risk, the extent of any flood protection works and the ability of the population to anticipate and cope with the hazard. Recently, the advancement in computer-aided technology has been extensively used in formulating models used for flood calculation and hazard analysis. This study focuses on using a hydraulic model HEC-RAS in a GIS and Remote Sensing environment for the area of Ping River basin, northern Thailand, generates the inundation area and the flood depth for the year 2005 flood event in Chiang Mai province by using the 1D HEC-RAS flood model, verifies the model by comparing the model results with the remote sensing image, and prepares hazard maps using the model output and other socio-economic data.