Flooding in Bangladesh: A Race Against Time

Abstract

Flooding is the most common type of natural disaster and is a major problem in Bangladesh that especially harms the disadvantaged. People are uniquely vulnerable to flooding in Bangladesh due to its low elevation, numerous rivers, coastal location, and high rainfall intensity. I estimate the number of people vulnerable to sea-level rise by overlaying a raster of the population over a raster of elevation. The population of Bangladesh is then broken into five risk groups based on their elevation above sea level. Nearly 4% of the population of Bangladesh, over six million people, live less than one meter above sea level. This puts them in the highest risk group, and the sea will rise one meter in the not-too-distant future. High economic growth has made Bangladesh, previously one of the poorest countries in the world, able to take substantial action to address the flooding problem.