Development of flood damage functions for agricultural crops and their applicability in regions of Asia

For reducing the uncertainty in quantification of flood damage, the development of more reliable flood damage functions (FDFs) is crucial. This study therefore primarily aims to improve the FDFs developed by Win et al. (2018) for rice crops by collecting detailed damage data on recent floods in the Bago River Basin of Myanmar. Depth-duration-damage functions were developed for different growth stages of the rice crops. The researchers then assessed the flood hazard and rice crop damage in the study area by integrating a two-dimensional diffusive-wave rainfall-runoff-inundation model and developed FDFs for validation. The developed FDFs was also applied in five selected river basins in five other Asian countries for validation of the FDFs.

This study presents new FDFs for rice crops that enable the quantitative estimation of rice yield losses for different growth stages of the rice crops. The estimated results regarding the flood damage to the rice crops agree reasonably with the reported data, indicating better estimations (mean absolute percentage error of 11 %). The developed FDFs can also be used in other areas in Asia where FDFs are unavailable.