Hot Spot Analysis of Tornado Due to Climate Change for Bangladesh: A GIS and Remote Sensing Approach

Introduction A fully developed tornado is one of the most terrifying weather events. The destruction caused by tornadoes is due mainly to the violence of the winds. Bangladesh experiences mostly the violent storm tornado at every year & it faces the deadliest tornados comparatively than other countries of the world. Tornados kill an average of 179 people per year (USA 80) in Bangladesh (Geo- fact sheet,2006), from 1967-1996 around 5373 tornado related deaths were observed and were most severe in the world ( Paul and Rejuan,2004).The 1989s tornado killed at least 1300 people and almost half of the world ( Paul,1997) Due to climate change the natures disastrous phenomena tornado and Norwesters are frequently occurring though short lived tornados are very hard to tie directly to climate change due to limited climatology (Science Daily, 2008). Global warming has a close relation with the formation of tornado as an increase in the sea surface temperature increases atmospheric moisture content and it causes severe weather and tornado activity particularly in cool season (Trapp et al, 2007). Occurrences of tornado most commonly defended on the time of day because of solar heating and it occurs in between 3-7pm when temperatures ranges in Bangladesh 33.3 c -11.7c (Kelly, Schefer et al, 2009 & Banglapedia, 2008) and average wind speeds prevail 220270 km/h (Finch & Dewan, 2000) whereas it stretches about 2-3 km across and stay on the ground for 3 miles (Paul,2004). Most people of the Bangladesh lives in a fragile houses and majority of the populations are poverty stricken (Grazulis, 2001). Fatalities due to tornado remain high in Bangladesh mostly the rural central part experiences 75% of strong tornado (Finch & Dewan , 2000) and the denser is exacerbated due to high population density-809 per sq km, poor quality of construction-55.6% kutcha road at central part and lack of tornado safety knowledge ( Pual 2001; BBS, 2001; Banglapedia, 2008 and Stewart , 2010 ). Its worse impact is that its thrown away the houses and animals to the long distances and the flying debris such as corrugated iron caused decapitation, lacerations or loss of limbs and diarrheal diseases (Finch & Dewan, 2000). In Bangladesh, women and children are more vulnerable than men to natural hazards like tornado (Ikeda,95 and Canon et al. 2005) The majority of tornadoes occur in agricultural areas as Crops need moisture to grow and the temperature variation associated with changing seasons (Stewart , 2010) and agriculture is the primary economic activities of 60 % people of Bangladesh (BBS, 2001) and main occupation (43.6%) of identified 21 districts of Bangladesh ( Banglapedia,2008). Agricultural loss due to tornado was reported as 5,000-12,000 taka per acre and agricultural production will decline erratically by 2050 due to heavier and more erratic rainfall (Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, 2008).
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Though the occurrences of tornado and norwesters cannot be prevented but the magnitude of impact can be prevented by developing apposite tornado countermeasures. The construction of tornado shelters and strong wall made housing are the popular means of tornado management strategy for Bangladesh in general. It has been observed that government has given more emphasized on cyclone and flood hazard management and paid less attention to the adverse impact of tornado (Paul, 2001) though many environmental threats were already reported ( Rasid and Mallik,1996). In order to lessen negative consequences of tornado, identified hotspot area must be considered and proper countermeasures should be adopted. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System technology has been widely used to map and model different types of hazards (Werner, 2001; Aziz et al. 2003).As tornados are short lived event so it very difficult to identify and provide instantaneous and synoptic view of necessary for the estimation of tornado and vulnerability assessment. The developed countries are using NOAA data for reporting tornado and Bangladesh is not using such modern technologies though fujita scale 5 (F5) levels of tornado mostly visiting here (Yamane et al, 2009).There are only four national networks of Doppler Radar Station (Geo fact sheet ,2006 and JICA,2010) to cover and collect data of tornado hazard. To mitigate this problem Bangladesh government is heartily trying (Bangladesh climate change strategy and action plan, 2008) but it is very difficult to keep update their database due to the lack of resources ( Dewan et al. 2006). The study mainly focuses to identify the most devastating places which is also known as hotspot zone due to tornado in Bangladesh in memorable history in terms of deaths, frequency, injury and economical loss etc. Study Area The study area was the whole Bangladesh which lies in between 2034 and 26 38 N latitudes and 88 01 and 92 41 E latitudes.This area is mainly located on flat low laying areas and a broad deltaic plain largely formed by Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. The topography is extremely flat and most elevations are less than 10 meters above sea level (Rasheed , 2008). It lies in the subtropical monsoon zone and experiences a humid climatic condition (Dewan et al. 2006) for which it is the breeding ground of most natural hazards specially tornado in Bangladesh (Stewart , 2010). Further the focused study area experiences annual rainfall ranges from 1200 mm to 5000 mm ( Rasheed , 2008) and average annual temperature ranges from 11.7c to 33.3c (Banglapedia, 2008). The more focused study area i.e middle part of Bangladesh remains dry and experiences less rainfall than other parts of Bangladesh though three mighty rivers passes away. Data Preparation Tornados data preparation is very difficult as data are not well documented (Ono et al, 2010) and mostly we have to rely on newspaper reports, Bangladesh Meteorological Department and Bangladesh Space Research and Remote Sensing Organization (SPARSO) etc. Another hardship
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is that peoples are mostly confused with identifying tornado and cyclone (Yamane et al. 2009). So both primary and secondary data were used for the study. The primary data include house types, health impact and media access etc. It is not possible to measure the proximity of hazards source as the probability of tornado point source occurring is .0363 (Stewart , 2010). Frequency of tornado and their death toll over 40 years were collected from different sources. The Geo-Coded values were mostly encoded from the Bangladesh and East India tornado prediction website .Besides more values were compiled from different sources to obtain a hotspot zone for the Bangladesh. Consideration of Hotspot zone Geographic Information Systems widely used to analyze the features within the context of neighboring features. A statistically significant hotspot may not contain highest values of features. It is very difficult to create a generally accepted Hotspot Zone due to the lacking of Geo-coded data of overall Bangladesh and as tornado has the less probability of spatially occurrences. So a simple procedure is adopted to identify the spatially related tornado events. The most severe and well documented 84 occurrences were used to identify hotspot zone (Finch, 2007) from 1875 to 2010 for Bangladesh. The values were further corrected to identify hotspot area. Getis-Ord Gi* algorithm mostly used to calculate and analyze the spatially co-related feature values. To find the optimum locations of tornado occurrences, geo-coded points are used (Finch , 2007) and the points are integrated within GIS environment. For the understanding of tornado events the geo-coded values are integrated in a number of geoprocessing tools. To obtain the statistically significant hotspot the following algorithms are used. Firstly, the geo-coded values are integrated and a threshold distance determines the general geographic locations. For obtaining a weighted point feature, collect events tools converts the integrated values indicating the number of events occurring in those locations. By running the hotspot analysis with rendering tools it will ensure the center of large hotspot cluster with Euclidean distance band and 4125.35 default neighborhood. Theres low to high events of occurrences are shown in figure1&2(with graduated color).Users have little control on the analysis using rendering tools by generating spatial weight matrix to assess different conceptualization of relationships of features. Intensity of occurrences are derived for the conceptualization of spatial relationships from the Getis-Ord Gi* tool. To consider the threshold distances in between features Zone of indifference work well to combine the inverse and fixed distance band. Here the manhattan distance method measured the distance by summing the differences between point coordinates and Clusters tolerance are found identical. Then Z-scores (Gi-Zscore) were calculated to apply a cold to hot graduated color rendering to the z-score field values. The Gi- Z scores were obtain at a standard deviation from -2.58 to 2.58 and the Gi- Zscores of rendered hotspot results were obtain within

Figure_1: Low to High Occurrences of tornado (Hotspot Area) in Bangladesh from 1955-2010

Figure_2: Tornado Hotspot Zone(Red Circle) of Bangladesh using Geographic information systems tools

A widely varying features density were calculated and rendered hotspot results generated. Interpolation tools used to create a rendered surface of GiZscore values by compressing the cell size (.0128). The graduated color red to bluish grey indicates the high to low value of occurrences and red circle identified the place of most occurrences of tornados. This surface area extent from 91.6074 to 88.9842 and 25.6058 to 22.6942 longitude and latitude respectively with 0.79 standard deviation. Table- 1: Possible Results of Hotspot Zone Identification with Standard Deviation, Geo-coded Values and Rendered Hotspot values. Scores 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. GiZscore (std.Dev) Some Geo-coded Values Latitudes Longitudes Rendered HS Results(GiZscore)

23.7 90.07 -2.58 -2.0 23.6 89.8 -2.58 t0 1.65 -2.0 to -1.0 24.3 90.7 1.65 to 1.96 -1.o to1.0 23.6 90.06 1.96 to 2.58 1.0 t0 2.0 23.8 88.6 2.58 2.0 *Std.Dev = Standard Deviation; Geo-coded Values = Lat/Long Values; HS = Hotspot

The extension surface encircling by different color represents the 21 districts of central- north Bengal with about 8000 square miles (figure-3).So with the help of Getis Ord GiZscore a hotspot was determined to analyze the neglected climatic phenomenon.
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Figure-3: Most Affected areas of Bangladesh due to tornado are calculated by evaluating death and injury ratio for 21 vulnerable districts of Bangladesh. Analysis on Hotspot Zone/ Area: Climate has a significant role to the formulation of tornado as it is related to global warming and Bangladesh lies in between a triangle where it is bounded by Indian great hills on two sides and Bay of Bengal on the other side. So the countrys geography weakens its capacity to withstand natural disasters and to adapt climate change (DFID, 2008).The poor people, children and women are vulnerable as they are unable to recover themselves from a disaster promptly (resilience). The hotspot zone is an area of about 41809.53 sq km (Figure-3) with a population of 43013917and 51.3% women where dominant economic activity is agriculture of more than 43.6 % people of the embedded 21vulnerable districts.(BBS,2001).House types are traditional kutcha house which is very defenseless to strong wind.

Table-2: The number of occurrences in each district block identified by hotspot analysis. No 1 2 3 Total Occurrences 2 3 4 No of District Block 16 3 2 Events Summary 32 9 18 59

Tornado mostly occurred in a relatively small area of central north part of Bangladesh where vast agricultural and open land exists. The moist and potentially unstable air has a tendency to rise and to become violent wind (GeoFact sheet,2006).The dry line mostly pass through the Centralwest part of Bangladesh (Finch,2007).About 84 occurrences were found where on an average 59 occurances occurred in this vast central-northern part of Bangladesh and suffered most fatalities than any other parts of the country (Finch, 2007 and BMO, 2010) The death and injury records were collected and calculated to obtain the best analytical results in support of hotspot zone. The following table shows the situation of death and injury history of the most affected 21 districts. Then it is classified for statistical analysis. After statistical manipulations, 21 vulnerable districts are found and mapped with the help of Geographic Information Science tools. Table -5: Death and Injury ratio calculations for vulnerable Districts (1960-2010)
No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Disrtrict Name Tangail Sirajgonj Pabna Rajbari Faridpur Madaripur Shariatpur Co milla Narayangonj Dhaka Narshingdi B. Baria Gazipur Kishoregonj Munshigonj Jamalpur Sherpur Gaibanda Bogra Manikgonj Mymensingh Death 1450 1131 272 1770 1285 1521 1456 370 200 2027 1118 124 948 1426 1253 1244 17 600 816 1648 1369 Injury 1560 2276 1796 1690 1415 1420 1045 870 42 3975 225 165 2560 1115 2760 362 123 927 192 1285 3238 Death/Injury 0.929487 0.496924 0.151448 1.047337 0.908127 1.071127 1.393301 0.425287 4.761905 0.509937 4.968889 0.751515 0.370313 1.278924 0.453986 3.436464 0.138211 0.647249 4.25 1.28249 0.422792

Table-6: Obtained classes and area for vulnerable districts

No 1

Class 0-.1014

Districts Gaibanda,Sherpur,Sirajgonj,Rajbari, Gazipur, Narshingdi,Munshigonj, Madaripur Brahmonbaria, Mymensingh,Jamalpur,Pabna, Shariatpur Dhaka, , Comilla, Faridpur,Manikgonj, Tangail Narayangonj,Kishoregonj, Bogra

Area (%) 8.22 7.04 6.72 6.33

2 3 4

.1015-.2545 .2545-.6042 .6043-4.762

Sources: Meteorological Department of Bangladesh and Bangladesh Space Research & Remote Sensing Organization (SPARSO). Conclusion Tornado is a neglected climatic event in Bangladesh. It has a quite few surface synoptic observatories to obtain thermodynamic data. Tornado forecasting is in its infancy with 28 active weather stations and 4 Doppler radars which is very few for collecting data of short lived tornado. In this study the identification of hotspot area to provide a means for the potential tornado vulnerability in Bangladesh, which can be used to mitigate future economic, agricultural and human loss. The most affected zone was developed and categorized into four vulnerable areas. The calculations of areas under different classes revealed that the 28.31 % of total Bangladesh is in vulnerable area with our capital Dhaka. All possible combination of hotspot map was prepared and the best results were shown in map. We can also follow that flimsy houses made with fragile traditional materials and tin sheets are very crucial things in times of occurrences. More shelters should be installed to reduce the vulnerability of tornado hazards. To cope with devastating climatic short lived event-tornado, awareness and mitigation measures should be taken to lessen the fatalities of the people of hotspot areas. Acknowledgement: Its my alacrity to address that this paper is fully owe to my friend Istiak Ahmed Bhuyan ( Student of Geography & Environment, University of Dhaka) and also to Dr. Ashraf Mahmood Dewan (Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia and Professor of Geography & Environment; University of Dhaka, Dhaka; Bangladesh) who encourage s me to do a better thing in life and Research arena.

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