Bangladesh Flashcards
What are the floods in Bangladesh like?
Huge by global standards, can inundate over 30% of the land mass at a time.
What is the average inundation of the landmass of Bangladesh?
18%
What percentage of the country have been affected by the floods?
75%
Why is Bangladesh so vulnerable?
75% of the country is 10m below sea level and 80% is classified as a floodplain.
Why is 80% of Bangladesh classified as floodplain?
it is principally a delta region of South Asia’s great rivers.
How often do floods occur in Bangladesh?
on a regular basis, but recent notable and catastrophic floods occured in 1988.
How often do catastrophic floods occur?
every 50 to 100 years.
How many people did the Bangladesh floods kill?
1,100
How much cropland was damaged?
2.2 million acres
How many people were displaced by the floods?
10.5 million
What happened to the transport links?
Highway connecting Dhaka to the rest of the country was flooded isolating the capital.
What role did the Brahmaputra and Ganges have?
caused flood by rising, they disgorged the water from seasonal wet monsoon rains and melting glaciers and snow in the Himalayas.
What were the deaths caused by?
Diarrhoea, drowning, landslides, snakebites and respiratory diseases.
How many caught dysentery or diarrhoea?
100,000 by 11 August
What happened to rice crops?
devastated TWICE that year, so farmers did not have time to recover their losses and replant
$290m damaged in initial floods.
What aid was given?
$150m, Saudi Arabia pledged $50million and 5 planes worth of food and medicine.
Benefits of the flood action plan
a system of huge embankments along the coast and rivers reinforced by concrete.
Increase channel capacity and hydraulic radius.
Causes erosion downstream and prevent deposition.
Negatives of the flood action plan
Causes erosion downstream and prevent deposition
Stops flood replenishing fields with nutrients and can stop rainwater escaping into fields.
Solutions
Flood action plan
Improved drainage canals
SPARSO and flood satellite imaging systems
What does SPARSO and flood satellite imaging systems do?
allow more warning by monitoring cloud cover, hydrographs and rainfall patterns across river basins
