Assessing Multi-hazard risk for disaster risk reduction in Jammu Division in North-West Himalayas, India

The mountainous region, which holds a diverse ecosystem providing services of global importance, is fragile owing to the varied topography and continuous human pressure. The risk from natural hazards in mountainous regions is substantial posing significant challenges and causing causalities. Northwestern Himalayas being located in the junction of the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates are delicate and face the brunt of vagaries from multiple hazards as well as anthropogenic pressure. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates multi-hazard risk assessment integrating both multi-hazard susceptibility and social vulnerability to look into possible high-risk-prone areas. The study makes use of frequency ratio in an ensemble with the Shannon entropy method to accomplish multi-hazard susceptibility (earthquake, floods, landslide, drought and forest fire), and for social vulnerability (a total of 13 indicators and 33 variables considered), Shannon information entropy model is utilized. The findings indicate that 58.40% area is highly and very highly susceptible to multi-hazard spanning across central, southeastern, northeastern and northwestern parts of the study area, whereas 40.59% area is highly vulnerable to multi-hazard covering western, northwestern, southwestern and southeastern parts of the study area. The results for multi-hazard risk indicated that southwestern, western and southeastern parts are highly risk prone areas accounting for 36.27% of the total geographical area. The study will be beneficial for the stakeholders in developing and putting into practice efficient strategies for disaster risk reduction. The study also recommends local adaptation strategies like Dhajji Diwari and surface excavation for more awareness and effective risk management.