Application of multicriteria decision making to estimate the potential of flooding

Integrating a geographic information system and multicriteria decision making methods have been lead to provide spatial multicriteria decision making methods. In this study, the spatial potential of flooding was determined based on analytic network process and analytic hierarchy process. At first, six factors of flooding were determined as criteria. The criteria were the slope, hillslope aspect, curve number, snow, and rainfall on snow and land use. Also, 25 subcriteria were determined for them. Then, the criteria and their subcriteria were weighted based on the analytic network process and the analytic hierarchy process methods. In the next stage, were integrated the weights of the criteria and subcriteria on their layers in the IlWIS 3 and were calculated the relative weighted average of flooding as the spatial potential of flooding. The results showed that analytic network process and the analytic hierarchy process methods have a high capability to estimate the potential of flooding. The analytic hierarchy process method had calculated the relative weighted average of flooding in the control and sample subcatchments 26 and 23 percent, respectively. Also, the analytic network process method had calculated it 25 and 21 percent. Based on the results, the both methods have the same capability to estimate the potential of flooding, but for comparison of subcatchments, the analytic hierarchy process method is recommended, whereas the analytic network process method is recommended for studying one subcatchment and spatial variations of flooding. Moreover, the analytic hierarchy process method is simpler than analytic network process method to estimate the potential of flooding.