Analysis, prioritization and strategic planning of flood mitigation projects based on sustainability dimensions and a spatial/value AHP-GIS system

Abstract

Floods are among the most devastating consequences of global warming and can cause unprecedented disruptions in the operations of contemporary cities. Moreover, the sustainability of the limited water resources calls for a well-defined decision-making framework that facilitates the implementation of available measures. This study aims to establish a set of criteria for the comprehensive urban flood risk assessment and the creation of a prioritization map of flood mitigation projects. The proposed model is based on spatial data and expert opinions and is used for the flood vulnerability assessment and the project mitigation prioritization. The notion of vulnerability is decomposed on eighteen multidimensional factors which are also clustered under the so-called sustainability pillars; that is the environment, the society and the economy. In a second stage an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework is coupled with a spatial database environment generated by a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software and the outcome of the aforementioned process is included in a vulnerability map. The latter allows for the hierarchical grouping of the ranked future flood mitigation projects. Finally, spatial sensitivity analysis is conducted over the selected parameters and the effects on the resulting hierarchy are discussed.