Satellite images provide information on the flood disaster footprints, which is essential for assessing the disaster impact and taking up flood mitigation activities. The Brahmaputra floods that occurred during June–July 2012 devastated a large part of Assam. This article discusses the maximum spatial extent affected due to the flood event, villages marooned and population affected, with the aid of multi-temporal satellite images coupled with the hydrological observations and freely available gridded population data.

The Nagaon district in Assam is in a sub-humid region with a greater part of the district comprising alluvial soil ranging from pure sand on the banks of the Brahmaputra to stiff clay. The area is subjected to frequent flooding by rivers during a spell of 4 months in a year. In the present study, flood hazard layer is considered as the primary input and is integrated with land use/land cover, infrastructure and population data and weightages are assigned to each class. Based on this, village flood risk index map for Nagaon district has been generated.