The Disastrous Flood of 1998 and Long Term Mitigation Strategies for Dhaka City

Abstract

The disastrous flood of 1998 was a result of excessiverainfall all over the catchment areas of the major rivers of Bangladesh. Dhaka City, which is surroundedby rivers on all sides, was seriously affected despite the completion of Phase I of the Dhaka IntegratedFlood Protection Project (DIFPP). Water entered into the protected part of the city throughhydraulic leakage such as buried sewerage pipes, breached and incomplete floodwalls, ungated culverts andinoperative regulators. The drainage network and retention ponds of the city were found to be in poorconditions and capacities of the pumping stations were found inadequate. There was a serious lack of coordinationbetween the agencies responsible for flood protection and drainage of the city. These issues must beaddressed to achieve long-term flood mitigation. In addition, feedback from both the experts andgeneral public indicated that completion of Phase II of DIFPP was essential to bring the eastern part ofthe city under flood protection. Other structural measures suggested in this paper include installing andmaintaining adequate drainage and pumping capacity and timely operation of regulators. This studyalso suggests a set of non-structural measures for flood mitigation that include protectingthe retention ponds, raising public awareness on maintaining the city drains, introducing landzoning and flood proofing in the eastern part of Dhaka, and stream lining institutional bottlenecks.