- Biogeography (19)
- Climatology (35)
- Environment (71)
- Geomorphology (55)
- GIS and Remote Sensing (15)
- Human and economic geography (59)
- Hydrology (53)
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- Various (30)
Abstract: Flood is one of the natural disasters causing colossal loss of life and property. It occurs with a strange regularity in different parts of India, thus devastating those particular areas. The most flood prone areas in the country are in the Ganga and Brahmaputra basins whilst the annual flood damages in the Ganga basin account for about 60 percent of the total. The extent of the damages shows a pattern of increase from west to east (downstream along the Ganga) and from south to north (towards the hills). The present study delineates the application of geographic information system (GIS) in mapping flood risk zones in Varanasi, one of the prominent districts of the Indo-Gangetic plain. The whole district witnesses havoc of flood in rainy season due to impounding of huge amount of water in the Ganga river. The damage and loss of life and cattle due to floods in the area under study are increasing year after year. It could be stated that high magnitude floods occurred in 2013 during the month of August, when the flood plains were mostly used for periodicity and gravity of food. Recognition of flooding parts and flood risk zones in the area under study are the primary steps in the flood control measures. GIS data base has been well utilized in delineating and tackling flood related problems in the area. An attempt has been made to prepare a map of an area measuring about 1526 sq. km. showing flood risk zone with the help of remote sensing data (IRS-P6, LISS III, 2008). A total of five flood risk zones are delineated in Varanasi district. With the help of remote sensing data, flood risk zones in the study area are categorized into low, middle, high, higher and highest level flood zones.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to examine the relevance of Geographical information system (GIS) supporting health planners for a district level healthcare planning. For this purpose, an attempt has been made here to calculate the hospital requirement area to know the specific sector that needs to better develop health facilities. The weightage is assigned to the class of thematic layers respectively to produce weighted thematic maps, which have been overlaid and numerically added in order to produce a Hospital requirement index (HRI) and hospital requirement zone (HRZ) map. These maps are very useful to calculate the exact area having good health facilities and also those wherein healthcare facilities need to be improved in Varanasi district. The Hospital requirement index (HRI) values according to the weighting method are found to lie in the range from 11 to 23. After calculation by weighting method using selected indicators, it is found that the areas coming under very high and high requirement class is 46.62% and 7.55%, respectively, whereas 3.39% and 42.63% of the total areas comes under low and moderate requirement classes in Varanasi district. Primary data are also collected from 800 respondents of 16 selected villages (2 villages from each development block) in the rural parts of the district to know about the utilization of healthcare facilities and their results are analysed with the help of statistical SPSS software. It is interesting to note that only 25.38% respondents are satisfied with the available healthcare services of primary health centres (PHCs), while 60% of respondents remain partially satisfied. The remaining 14.62% (117) respondents are not satisfied with the services of PHCs.
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