Optimal Urban Flood Management Using Spatial Multi Criteria Decision Making Approach

Water management in urban areas includes wastewater control and developing efficient drainage systems. Developing the maps of areas with potential of flood-inundation could be an appropriate tool for urban planning and urban developing strategies. Vulnerability analysis of different urban areas is a complex process because it depends on several spatial and temporal parameters and criteria. The purpose of this research is to prepare flood hazard maps to determine more accurate decisions in urban flood management using a combination of multi-criteria decision making and geographic information system (GIS) as a planning support system (PSS). The final flood hazard map shows that regions in the southeastern of the study area have a high hazard with regarding to the flood potential map. It should be mentioned that these regions are located in low-land (with low elevation) areas that their slope are less than 2.5 percent. In addition, in order to evaluate the spatial multi criteria decision making model, the capability of spatial modeling by an intelligent model, artificial neural network, is assessed. The advantages of using the SMCDM (Spatial Multi Criteria Decision Making) model in developing flood management strategies are discussed using the case study.