Flood Risk Management Using MCDM Systems

Economic and social losses due to flood are diligently increasing. Although, traditional procedures had emphasized on flood control and on decreasing flood by means of usual structural approaches, however, in new procedures of management, the emphasis is on decreasing the flood consequences that is called flood risk management. To quantify the concept of resiliency, some criteria should be introduced. The multiple criteria decision making system (MCDM) is used as a tool for supporting the decision makers for prioritizing and making decisions about choosing the proper strategies. In this paper, MCDM system is used to study flood management in a part of the Basin of Gorgan River, (north of Iran) from downstream of Golestan 1 dam to the downstream of the city of Gonbad. Seven strategies consist of resistance and resilient, and structural and nonstructural strategies are introduced.Resiliency attributes must be considered including amplitude, graduality and recovery rate. Flow hydraulics is evaluated by modeling the flood in return periods of 2 to 10000 years. Finally, by using of MCDM method, those scenarios are ranked by using of compensatory methods of MCDM. Priorities and sensibility of the results is also analyzed to rank the risk management strategies.

Keywords:

Risk management , MCDM , Flooding , Resiliency attributes