A community-based approach to flood hazard and vulnerability assessment in flood prone areas :: A case study in Kelurahan Sewu Surakarta City Indonesia

ZEIN, Muhammad, Dr. rer.nat. Muh Aris Marfai, S.Si., M.Sc

2010 | Tesis | S2 Geo Informasi untuk Manajemen Bencana

Kelurahan Sewu of Surakarta City is located in a flood prone area. The largest flood inundation which occurred on the late December 2007 caused inundation on the entire village. Strengthening and raising public awareness of disaster-prone areas is necessary in order to reduce the vulnerability and risk. Community knowledge is very important to improve preparedness and mitigation to reduce impact due to flood. The research is focused on a local scale, and is based on community knowledge of, flood hazard, identify the element at risk, and assess the vulnerability of each of the elements at risk. The primary data were obtained through interviewing 104 respondents who were purposively selected based on the structural types of household building, the distance from the river dike, and the elevation. General characteristics of community for social vulnerability to floods were observed. It was found that some of the communities lived on the riverbanks with unorganized housing, almost one-fifth of the communities consist of the elder and the youngest people, one-third of the communities were un-educated, and a half of people have low income. Moreover, the community has their capacity to deal with flood hazard through organizations and the local traditions. Participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) was applied to get information about flood cause, depth, and duration. The information was processed using simple kriging method in ILWIS software with Gaussian semivariogram model to establish flood depth and flood duration map. Eight Rukun Tetangga (RT) areas were found as the most prone area to flood hazard. Physical and social vulnerabilities were examined and mapped. Four common structural types of household buildings from nine structural types of household buildings were found in study area. The relationships between flood depth and damage for these structural types were plotted into vulnerability curve. The most vulnerable building structure is the structural type with ground floor and bamboo wall. The least vulnerable building structure is the structure type with concrete and ceramic floor, concrete wall, and clay roof. Vulnerability of building contents is related to the level of income of a household. The higher the socio economic level of the head of household is, the more the value of household building contents is so that the greater the degree of loss of building contents is when facing flood. Vulnerability of outside property depends on the people preparedness and capability of facing flooding. Social vulnerability was generated with a combination of eight socio economic parameters of the household. The result indicates that only a few households have high vulnerability, most of households have moderate and low vulnerability for socio economy. That is why the people still live in the areas (flood prone areas) because their combination of social vulnerability is not so high. On the other hand, their capabilities such as social organizations and local traditions also help them to alleviate for recovery during an after flooding.

Kata Kunci : Kelurahan Sewu,Community,Field survey,Participatory geographic information system (PGIS),Flood hazard