Flood susceptibility modeling and hazard perception in Rwanda

Abstract Flooding is a deleterious phenomenon that induces detrimental impacts on humans, properties and environment. As a result, the knowledge of susceptible places and hazard perception is increasingly pertinent. This study mainly aims at identifying areas susceptible to flood through the application of logistic regression model using remote sensing data (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS). A flood inventory was generated using 153 historical flood locations and a total of 10 predicting factors (elevation, slope, aspect, profile curvature, distance from rivers, distance from roads, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalized Difference Soil Index (NDSI), the Topographic Wetness Index (TWI) and rainfall) were utilized. Flood points were randomly subdivided into training (75%) for model building and testing (25%) points for validation through the Area Under Curve (AUC) approach. The results indicated that NDVI and rainfall are the most influencing variables for estimating flood risk as they showed a high positive relationship with flood occurrence in the study area. Testing datasets disclosed 79.8% of prediction rate using the AUC. Moreover, the results have been linked with community perception on flood and the outcome revealed that the government is perceived as responsible for all flood mitigation measures instead of being a shared responsibility. This perception may contribute to the increase in susceptibility. The results of this study will be essential for upcoming development projects from different organizations operating in many developing countries and would assist as a baseline for flood risk reduction and management especially for Rwanda.