STUDY ON FLOOD INUNDATION IN PEKALONGAN, CENTRAL JAVA

Abstract

Tidal flood or ‘rob’ is a serious problem in many coastal areas in Indonesia, including Pekalongan in the northern coast of Java island. This study aimed to simulate the flood inundation area for different scenarios of sea level rise, also to investigate the possibility of land subsidence that may further aggravate the problem of flooding in Pekalongan. In this study, the MIKE-21 model was used to simulate and predict the flood inundation area. Tidal data were generated from the Tide Model Drive (TMD). The tidal flood simulations were carried out for three different scenarios of sea level rise: 1) current situation, 2) next 50 years, assuming no sea level rise, and 3) next 50 years, assuming 50 cm of sea level rise. Based on the results, the ranges of water level rise in Pekalongan for each scenario were 0.23-1.27 m, 0.36-1.38 m, and 0.65-1.53 m, respectively. Meanwhile, ground displacement maps were derived from the ALOS/PALSAR data using Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (D-InSAR) technique. Twelve level 1.0 images of ALOS/PALSAR data acquired in ascending mode during 2008 to 2009 were collected and processed in time-series analyses. In total, 11 pairs of interferogram were produced by taking the first image in 2008 as the master image. The results showed that the average of land subsidence rate in Pekalongan city was 3 cm/year, and the subsidence mainly occurred in the western part of the city.