Inundation Risk Assessment for Nagapatinam Coast, Tamil Nadu, Southeast Coast of India - Monitoring and Prediction of Tropical Cyclones in the Indian Ocean and Climate Change - page 357

Inundation Risk Assessment for
Nagapatinam Coast, Tamil Nadu,
Southeast Coast of India
Gowrappan Muthusankar*, Chokalingam Lakshumanan 1
and Sellappan Eswaramoorthi 2
Laboratory of Geomatics and Applied Informatics, French
Institute of Pondicherry, Pondicherry - 605001
1 Centre for Remote Sensing, Bharathidasan
University, Tiruchirappalli - 620024
2 Department of Civil Engineering, Anna University of
Technology, Tiruchirappalli - 620024
*e-mail: [e-mail]
1. Introduction
Indian coastline is about 7500 km in length (Chandramohan et al., 2001). Out
of this, east coast contributes 2545 km (CICFRI, 2006). About 17% of India's
population resides along the coastal zone (Ramesh, 2010), and coastal resources
contribute a significant part of their livelihood. This coastline is highly dynamic
and experiences frequent natural disasters such as tropical cyclones, storm
surges, coastal accretion and erosion. Historical meteorological data shows
that more than 1000 cyclonic disturbances occurred in the Bay of Bengal (BoB)
in the last century; around 500 of them were either depressions or deep
depressions while over 400 were either storms or severe storms (Cyclone eAtlas
- IMD, 2008), making Indian east coast one of the most vulnerable coastlines
in the world. This coastal dynamism is brought about by global warming and
climate change that results in sea level rise due to melting up of ice mass and
thermal expansion of the ocean - and this is one of the most serious problems
faced by coastal communities (IPCC, 2007). The Nagapattinam coastal region
experienced 115 cyclonic disturbances in the past century (Cyclone eAtlas -
IMD, 2008), and has an estimated Probable Maximum Storm Surge (PMSS)
above high tide level of 4.2 m (Kalsi et al., 2007), expected sea level rise of
1 mm/yr (Unnikrishnan et al., 2006). During December 2004 tsunami, this
coast was affected with an estimated run up level ranging from 2.6 to 5.6 m