Multicriteria Analysis for Flood Vulnerable Areas in Southeastern Slovakia

Abstract

Floods are natural phenomena which cannot be prevented. The causes of flooding are extremely heavy rains or rapid melting of snow combined with a significantly reduced ability to detain stormwater in areas. However the negative human-based factors cause changes in runoff ratio and increase the risk of flooding. Human activities change flood behavior in many circumstances. Activities in flood plains and catchment areas such as land clearing for urbanization or agriculture, or construction of infrastructure such as highways, roads and bridges across the flood plain may increase the magnitude of flooding, which in turn increases the damage to property and lives. Determining the flood vulnerable areas is important for decision makers for planning and management activities. Multicriteria analysis methods (MCA) are used to analyze the flood vulnerable areas. Geographical information system (GIS) applications are used for managing, producing, analyzing and combining spatial data. The aim in integrating MCA with GIS is to provide more flexible and more accurate decisions to the decision makers in order to evaluate the effective factors. Some of the causative factors for flooding in watershed are taken into account as daily rainfall, size of watershed, land use, slope and the type of soil. The selection of criteria that has spatial reference is an important step in MCA. The objective of this article is to analyze the flood vulnerability in Bodva river basin, eastern Slovakia. We determined the flood-effective factors, estimate their significance and applied two different approaches of MCA inside the GIS environment.

Keywords

• analytical hierarchy process,causative factors,flood risk,geographical information system

References

1. Blišťan P. 2012. Interpolation methods for modeling and visualization of spatial phenomena in GIS environment. Fyzikálne faktory prostredia 2, 99 - 105.
2. Boroushaki S. & Malczewski J. 2008. Implementing an extension of the analytical hierarchy process using ordered weighted averaging operators with fuzzy quantifiers in ArcGIS. Computers & Geosciences 34, 399 - 410.
3. Hall J. 2010. Editorial: Journal of Flood Risk Management. J Flood Risk Manage, 3, 1–2.
4. Implementation of directive 2007/60/ES of 23rd October 2007 on flood risk assessment and management: Preliminary flood risk assessment in Bodrog river basin, Attachments. MoE (Ministry of Environment), SWME (Slovak Water Management Enterprise). [online]. Available at: http://www.minzp.sk/files/sekcia-vod/bodrog-prilohy.pdf
5. Kandilioti G. & Makropoulos Ch. 2012. Preliminary flood risk assessment. The case of Athens. Natural Hazards 61, 441 - 468.
6. Meyer V., Scheuer S. & Haase D. 2009. A multicriteria approach for flood risk mapping exemplified at the Mulde river, Germany. Natural Hazards 48, 17 - 39.
7. Petrow T., Thieken A.H., Kreibich H., Bahlburg C.H. & Mercz B. 2006. Improvements on Flood Alleviaton in Germany: Lessons Learned from the Elbe Flood in August 2002, Environmental Management 38, 717 - 732.
8. Saaty T.L. 1980. The Analytic Hierarchy Process: Planning, Priority Setting, Resource Allocation, McGraw-Hill International Book Co., New York, NY, p. 437.

9. Solín Ľ. & Skubinčan P. 2013. Flood risk assessment and management: review of concepts, definitions and methods. Geographical Journal 65, 23 - 44.
10. Stein M.L. 1999. Interpolation of Spatial Data. Springer-Verlag New York, p. 247.
11. Yahaya S., Ahmad N. & Abdalla R.F. 2010. Multicriteria Analysis for Flood Vulnerable Areas in Hadejia-Jama'are River Basin, Nigeria. European Journal of Scientific Research 42, 71 - 83.
12. Yalcin G. & Akyurek Z. 2004 Analysing flood vulnerable areas with multicriteria evaluation. In Proceedings from XXth ISPRS Congress of Geo-Imagery Bridging Continents, pp. 359–364.
13. Zeleňáková M. 2009. Preliminary flood risk assessment in the Hornád watershed. In: River Basin Management 5, Southampton: Wessex Institute of Technology, 15 - 24.
14. Zeleňáková M. & Gaňová L. 2011. Integrating multicriteria analysis with geographical information system for evaluation flood vulnerable areas. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference, SGEM 2011. Bulgaria, Sofia: STEF92 Technology, 433 - 440.