Members’ Publication

Kishoreganj District consist of thirteen upazillas namely Kishoreganj Sadar, Hossainpur, Pakundia, Katiadi, Karimgonj, Tarail, Itna, Mithamoin, Austogram, Nikli, Bajitpur, Kuliarchar, Bhairab where Austogram, Nikli and Mithamoin are the flash flood and disaster prone area in Bangladesh. Though flood is the common phenomenon in the haor areas, people have had an experience about the seasonal and flash flood with its frequency and magnitude. Flash flood mainly affects severely which was 70% where as 19% and 11% were rained flood and river flood damage respectively. Now it is more challenges to predict about the flood due to different development activities in the upstream, embankment and river filling as well as change of river flow. Recent years flood attack unpredictably and severely in the haor areas and damage agricultural crop with a large amount. Ninety-five (95%) percent respondents said that Boro crops mainly damaged by flood. This agricultural loss falls a serious impact on national economy. Nikli upazilla is very densely populated and the people are bound to live here in such a flood or erosion prone areas. Because of the flash flooding area, it is sometimes identified as the highly food insecure regions of the country though it has a great contribution of producing the highest amount of rice through the country. Farmer’s response to crop insurance (CI) was positive and partnership between private and public sectors and NGOs to implement CI were played a vital role. The study was conducted during the period of January 2015 to June 2015.

Spatial urban growth and its impact on land surface temperature (LST) is a high priority environmental issue for urban policy. Although the impact of horizontal spatial growth of cities on LST is well studied, the impact of the vertical spatial distribution of buildings on LST is under-investigated. This is particularly true for cities in sub-tropical developing countries. In this study, TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement (TanDEM-XDEM), Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection (ASTER)-Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM), and ALOS World 3D-30m (AW3D30) based Digital Surface Model (DSM) data were used to investigate the vertical growth of the Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA) in Bangladesh. Thermal Infrared (TIR) data (10.6-11.2µm) of Landsat-8 were used to investigate the seasonal variations in LST. Thereafter, the impact of horizontal and vertical spatial growth on LST was studied. The result showed that: (a) TanDEM-X DSM derived building height had a higher accuracy as compared to other existing DSM that reveals mean building height of the Dhaka city is approximately 10 m, (b) built-up areas were estimated to cover approximately 94%, 88%, and 44% in Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), and Fringe areas, respectively, of DMA using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification method, (c) the built-up showed a strong relationship with LST (Kendall tau coefficient of 0.625 in summer and 0.483 in winter) in comparison to vertical growth (Kendall tau coefficient of 0.156 in the summer and 0.059 in the winter), and (d) the ‘low height-high density’ areas showed high LST in both seasons. This study suggests that vertical development is better than horizontal development for providing enough open spaces, green spaces, and preserving natural features. This study provides city planners with a better understating of sustainable urban planning and can promote the formulation of action plans for appropriate urban development policies

The study investigates the relationship between drought and vegetation variations in three main basins of western and southwestern of Iran, using the comprehensive approach of time-series analysis, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and anomaly calculation. A total of 30 ground stations’ daily meteorological data and the MODIS 16-day composite NDVI products (2000–2017) were used in this case. The results showed that in the Great Karoun River (GKRW) and Karkheh River (KRW) sub-regions, the NDVI decreased slightly over the study period. Simultaneously, in the West Marginal (WMW) sub-region the NDVI slightly increased somewhat. Overall, the NDVI in the whole study area presented an insignificant decrease. Also the results found that there is a significant relationship (p < 0.02) between the NDVI (0.3–0.7) with spring drought and between NDVI (0.2–0.3) with fall drought (p < 0.01). There is a marginally significant relationship (R = 0.43, p = 0.07) between NDVI (0.3–0.4) with fall drought and a relatively high, but insignificant relationship between NDVI (0.7–0.8) with spring drought (R = 0.41, p = 0.09). Low temperature can play an important role in determining the relationship between SPI and NDVI, which evidenced that it can trade-off the effect of a very wet year. As well as a year with very wet condition can affect the NDVI of the coming years. Since summer is hot season in the study area and most of the vegetation consists of shrubs and grasslands, of which the NDVI ranges between 0.2 and 0.4, the vegetation cover can be significantly affected by a wet summer with abundant precipitation.

Since August 2017, more than 744,400 stateless Rohingya refugees – an ethnic Muslim minority group from the Rakhine State – have entered Bangladesh to escape serious crimes against humanity conducted by the Myanmar Army. Extensive level of deforestation and hill cutting activities took place in Cox’s Bazar District (CBD) in Bangladesh to accommodate them. The refugee camps are sitting on hills and loose soil and are highly vulnerable to rainfall-triggered landslides. Notably, in June 2017, landslides in the same region killed at least 160 people. From this perspective, the study aims to develop a localised landslide early warning system (EWS) for the Rohingya refugees and their host communities in CBD. A novel method, combining landslide inventory and susceptibility maps, rainfall thresholds and dynamic web-based alert system, has been introduced to develop the landslide early warning system (EWS) by applying advanced geoinformation techniques. Results suggest that approximately 5,800 hectares of forest land cover disappeared due to the 2017 Rohingya influx. Land cover changes through hill cutting andslope modifications, and unplanned urbanisation are predominantly responsible for slope failures and consecutive 5-day periods of rainfall between 95–220 mm could initiate landslides in high susceptible areas. The EWS would support the local authorities and international organisations in reducing disaster risks and saving lives from landslides in a humanitarian context.

This paper reviews the interlinkages of critical state of water resources, supply systems, rapid urbanisation and demand regime, aggravated by tourism leading to increasing water insecurity in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). Urban centres in the HKH have been defined based on different criteria, but mountain-specific criteria are lacking. In the mountains, small settlements such as district headquarters perform a large number of functions, typical of an urban centre. However, they are not formally classified as urban centres because they do not meet the census-defined nationally set criteria of the respective country. Nonetheless, water insecurity is a reality, attributed to: (i) water governance issues; (ii) inappropriate urban planning, failing, and to some extent, unable to account for the floating population, such as tourists; and (iii) the scourge of climate change which could worsen the situation further. Short-term coping strategies to meeting water demands often involve unsustainable solutions, such as groundwater extraction, with long-term repercussions. However, long-term strategies for water sustainability by the governments have been beneficial while others are yet to show success. Initiatives by civil society and governments along similar lines in other countries could lead to a water-secure future for the fragile urban centres of the HKH region.

A complete guide for children with picture on 'Road Safety Rules.'

This book encourages children to work on environmental awareness.

A huge amount of wastes are generated from the kitchen markets every day and these are not properly managed. Most of the kitchen market wastes are organic wastes and there is huge opportunity of converting these organic wastes into resources like composting of waste, producing biogas and electricity generation. At present wastes are just dumped in landfills which require huge land. There is no intermediary systems in practiced like recycling, incineration, composting, converting into other resources. Countries like Bangladesh with a small land and huge population have to suffer for the issue of waste management. This study is conducted on Kitchen Market Waste Management in Dhaka City Corporation and the study areas were Bonolota (New Market) kitchen market and Mirpur 1 kitchen market. This study tries to show the present waste management system of kitchen markets based on case study and also tries to provide some waste management systems that can be used to manage kitchen market wastes.

It is very likely that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as floods, flash floods, storms, heat and cold waves, riverbank erosion, and drought in the river basin of Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region. This could mean detrimental impacts to the poor and marginal people in the lower Teesta basin (LTB) in Bangladesh. Though adaptation involves financial costs, the farmers' practicing adaptation in LTB experience diminished crop loss and damage. This study was aimed at assessing the promising adaptation practices, their economic return, and social welfare in the LTB through an extended cost-benefit analysis. The study suggests that among the adaptations, shallow tube-well (STW) based irrigation practice in both sandy and loamy soil has the highest marginal adaptation cost (MAC) but the lowest benefit-cost ratio (BCR). The deep tube-well (DTW) based irrigation practice generates superior benefits to the farmers compared to the STW based farming due to initial establishment by the government which is very expensive. Maize farming as an alternate and less resource consumptive cropping produces nearly five times higher economic benefits than the costs which can be acknowledged as the most profitable and resilient adaptation option in the LTB. Though MAC is relatively low for the short-duration variety (SDV) rice among the promising adaptations, its economic profitability is 62% lower than that of the maize cultivation. However, having higher BCR the maize cultivation generates US$86 higher welfare to the farmers than the SDV rice which may strengthen the farmer's preference of maize cultivation over the SDV rice. It can be stated with high confidence that strategic adaptation planning, soft credit, technological advancement, and subsidized agricultural inputs will encourage the farmers to carry out adaptation options which may reduce climate-induced loss and damages for the farmers and build socio-economic resilience in the LTB and other similar areas of South Asia.