Identification of Tsunami Hazard Zones in Krabi Coastlines using GIS Techniques

Abstract

One of the natural coastal disaster tsunami hit the various coastal areas of Southern Thailand including krabi by devastating human lives and infrastructure in 26 December 2004. This research focused to identify tsunami hazard zones in such tsunami affected region krabi, using Geographical information systems (GIS) techniques. This research is applied, qualitative, GIS based and field oriented. The tsunami hazard criteria were initially developed including tsunami hazard parameters. The developed criteria were justified using Saaty scale of importance method as weight of comparison matrix method. The five different classes of tsunami zones were predicted using various GIS techniques such as extracting the data layers, converting the data layers from vector to raster format, classification and reclassification of various raster format data layers into required classes and map calculation by adopting the assigned weight of the different parameters, were utilized. The different parameter such as mangroves, elevation, road and river were utilized. The predicted tsunami hazard zone model was developed into five categories naming as very high tsunami hazard zones, high tsunami hazard zones, moderate tsunami hazard zones, low and very low tsunami hazard zones by identifying the tsunami hazards different areas in these types of categories with their appropriate definition of such predicted regions for utilization in future. It is assured that this tsunami hazard model will save human lives and infrastructure in future it may be incorporated for redevelopment for the region.