Averting Flood
Damage
By Shoaib Siddiqui
US
I was puzzled to see the destruction
of infrastructure due to recent rains in Pakistan,
especially the damage to the recently constructed
roads and highways in Balohistan. One thing which
I noticed watching the flood damage footage was
serious lack of or inadequate design of culverts/
srainage structures.
In this age of technology flood maps such as USGS
which are readily available in almost all the
County Flood Departments here in US can be prepared
at a very minimal cost compared to the cost of
recent devastation. I am not sure if they have
such maps available and how accurate was the mapping
used in design.
I am proposing to have a candid discussion about
this disaster and come up with any recommendations
and assistance such as mapping to create real
world maps such as USGS and technical assistance
to read and interpret them for incorporation into
the design of roads/highways. This measure could
also help in identifying locations for the reconstruction
of damaged and washed away villages. From the
footage it seems most of the villages were either
built in flood plains or with no flood protection.
I am a member of Scope (a registered non-profit
organization in the state of California); this
issue was discussed in our July 8, 2007 meeting.
I was appointed as the lead person to come up
with ideas and suggestions and to coordinate with
concerned authorities in Pakistan.
We also discussed the ways and means to help engineers
and administrators to cope with this disaster
and getting expertise and assistance from other
non-profit American organizations such as Scope.
I am recommending the following steps:
1. Create or improve the existing rainfall database
for rain-affected areas. This database will help
in determining the amount of water (Q) which will
be flowing through the flood affected areas.
2. Create or improve existing flood maps by flying
the targeted areas; these flood maps can pinpoint
the location of point of concentrations streams,
rivers, and are helpful in sizing of drainage
structures to be built with freeways, highways,
and roads. I would like to add the footage I watched
on television reveals that either the drainage
structures under the roads were built on wrong
locations or were undersized.
3. I also noticed that a lot of villages were
either washed away, destroyed, or partially destroyed
either as they were built in flood plains or without
any flood protection maybe because of lack of
available data or knowledge. Had these villages
been properly designed and established based on
the information I explained above in number 1
and 2 the disaster could have been minimized or
eliminated.
4. We are willing to provide technical assistance
and financial resources to certain extent for
collecting data, preparing flood maps, and management
tools for proper design of roads and villages.
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