The Utilization of GIS in Revealing the Reasons behind Flooding Ras Gharib City, Egypt

Flash floods in Egypt are considered the worst weather-related natural disasters. They are dangerous as they suddenly and unpredictably occur. Ras Gharib City is one of the recent cities that was subjected to a destructive flash flood in October 2016. The city was founded 85 years ago and it has no flood hazard history. This paper presents the utilization of GIS environment in estimating the drainage streams discharging towards the city using Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 30m spatial resolution. Two scenarios are conducted in this study to show why Ras Gharib was subjected to a flash flood. In the first scenario, a drainage map is conducted using the normal elevations extracted from the topographic map. In the second scenario, a drainage map is conducted using the same extracted elevations after elevating Minya - Ras Gharib Highway with 1.5m. The study shows that elevating the highway is the main reason of subjecting the city to this flood causing 11 dead people and 36 injured.