Investigating and managing flood risk in Kashan region using GIS

Undoubtedly, the flood is known as a natural disaster, but in practice, the flood is one of the most terrible natural disasters in the world in both terms of mortality and financial losses. Between 1988 and 1997, around 390,000 people were killed in natural disasters around the world, 58% of whom were related to flood, 26% were affected by earthquake, and 16% victims of hurricanes and other disasters. Total damage over the past 10 years was about $ 700 billion, of which 33, 29, and 28 per cent were related to flood, storm and earthquakes, respectively. In this regard, a worrying issue has been the increasing trend of mortality and flood damage in the world in recent decades. The phenomenon of flood in Iran is considered as the most harmful natural disaster whose damages account for more than 70% of the whole natural disasters. Increasing population and assets in floodplains, hydrosystem changes and destructive effects of human activities have been among the main reasons for this trend. Today, with the development of information technology, much emphasis has been put on the use of GIS to model and assess the dangers and damage caused by floods. The high speed and precision of these systems, their vast coverage and multi-aspect nature, and their ease of use and low cost have made them more and more utilized in managing the flood crisis. In this paper, we tried to use the GIS technique in managing the flood risk crisis in Kashan area.