Evaluating the impact of flood hazard caused by tropical cyclones on land use using remote sensing and GIS in wadi uday: Sultanate of Oman

Two severe tropical cyclones hit the Sultanate of Oman; Gonu in June 2007 and Phet in June 2010. Wadi Uday passes through the main urban areas of Muscat, the capital city, which was among the most affected areas. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of flood hazards on land use, in Wadi Uday lower basin, using Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The Wadi basin was captured using 40 meter Digital Elevation Model (DEM), while total damage were examined using Ikonos images which acquired in 12/6/2007, coupled with land use dataset for 2003, and rainfall record of the past 20 years. The analysis showed that the highly affected land use categories were the recreation and residential areas with a ratio of 31% each. Roads, agriculture and public buildings were moderately affected. Further research will compare these results to that of Phet (June 2010) on the same area.