Identification and validation of potential flood hazard areas using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and Sentinel 1 radar data processing technique

Subject Areas : Applications in natural hazard and disaster

Ali Mehrabi ¹ , mohsen pourkhosravani ² , fariba pourzarei jalal-abadi ³

1 - Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Lit. & Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Lit. & Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran
3 - MSc. Student of Spatial Planning, Department of Geography, Faculty of Lit. & Humanities, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran

Received: 2021-12-05 Accepted : 2022-05-16 Published : 2023-09-23

Keywords: Fuzzy-AHP, Flood hazard Index, Sentinel 1 Images, Zarand Basin, remote sensing,

Abstract :

Today, due to climate change and the occurrence of torrential rains, flood hazard is one of the major problems in arid areas. Zarand city in Kerman province is one of these areas that has suffered a lot of damage in infrastructure and agriculture due to this phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to identify and determine potential flood hazard areas using remote sensing and GIS techniques. In this regard, eight criteria were used to prepare the flood hazard index, these parameters include the criteria of flow accumulation, draining capability, elevation, distance to drinage, land cover, runoff coefficient, slope and geology. The mentioned layers were weighed and combined in GIS environment after forming a pairwise comparison matrix based on Fuzzy-AHP method. Finally, according to the flood hazard index (FHI), a flood hazard map related to the study area was prepared. The results show that about 5% of the study area is very high hazard (18800 hectares), 23% high hazard (94100 hectares), 44% medium hazard (179700 hectares), 22% low hazard (88200 hectares) and 6% very low (23,100 hectares). High and very high hazard areas are mostly located in the plains and agricultural areas. In order to validate the created flood hazard map, the map of flooded areas obtained by applying the threshold method on the Sentinel 1 image was used. A comparison of the two shows that about 32 and 49% of the total area of flooded areas are in high-hazard and very high-hazard classes, respectively. The results showed that the use of GIS-based multi-criteria analysis method can be effective in flood hazard analysis.