Floods are common natural disaster occurring in most parts of the world. This results in damage to human life and deterioration of environment. In many parts of the Indian subcontinent, flooding reaches catastrophic proportions during monsoon season.

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Surat city is one of the major important cities of Gujarat which is settled on Tapi River. Any natural calamity which causes loss of lives to property & infrastructure seriously impacts the economy of the state so it becomes highly necessary that new flood control systems as well as the storage reallocation and reservoir reoperation of existing ones should be in place.

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Out of the total rainfall of India, about 75% of it is received during the four moths (June to September) due to the South-West monsoon which is non-uniformly distributed in space as well.. However, the heavy and intense rainfall is not the only factor contributing to floods. The other causes of flood are inadequate capacity within riverbanks to contain high flows and silting of riverbeds, landslides leading to obstruction of flow and change in the river course, retardation of flow due to tidal and backwater effects, poor natural drainage, cyclones, snowmelt and glacial outbursts, and dam break flow.

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Keeping this in view, it is necessary to keep the Ukai dam reservoir operations poised and prepared for flood protection & control as it is a major flood control point coming on Surat city. Ukai is designed to cope with projected floods of 49470 m3/s (17.47 lac cusecs) and probable maximum flood of 59880 m3/s (21.16 lac cusecs). The provided spillway has a capacity Flood Control (by Reservoir Operations) for 16.34 lac cusecs.