Using Multi Criteria Decision Making and Remote Sensing Techniques in GIS Environment for Flood Susceptible Zones Assessment in Lighvan Chai Catchment

Flood is the main destructive phenomena in Iran which causes human casualties and financial damages every year. The purpose of this research is to define flood susceptible zones in Ligcanchai Catchment. To achieve this end this study provided different information layers such as slope, elevation, soil hydrological units, curve number, runoff height, lithology, land use and landcover, hydrography density, compactness coefficient of 23 basins by using maps, reports, satellite images and field studies. All layers were then weighted with criteria and sub criteria. The study used the hierarchical method to weight criteria and fuzzy logic to weight sub criteria. Then 5 flood susceptible zones were defined by using multi-criteria evaluation and linear combination was weighted. The results show that around 28 percent of the Catchment has high and very high flood risk and that these areas are located near Tabriz city. Since flood events destroy the infrastructures and cause human casualties every year, substantial actions must be taken to prevent the high and very high flood risks. These activities must be planned in the integrated watershed management plans, and the flood risk management in order to improve the watershed vegetation in the watershed to minimize financial damages and human life losses.