Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Identification of flood risk area in the Orontes river basin, Turkey, using multi-criteria decision analyses

Author(s):

Ahmet İrvem ¹*, Fatih Topaloğlu ²

Recieved Date: 2012-06-30, Accepted Date: 2012-09-22

Abstract:

The objective of this study was to evaluate flood risk area for the Orontes river basin in Turkey, using the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) within the Geographic Information Systems. Flood risk areas were evaluated using rainfall, slope, elevations, size of sub-watersheds and soil types. These factors were chosen as the most influential factors for generating the flood risk map. MCDA was performed by adding the weighted flood rankings of all the causative factors, according to their relative importance to each other and to their expected importance in causing floods. ILWIS, GIS software was used for spatial analyses and MCDA. Estimated risk map for the Orontes river basin obtained by adding the weighted flood rankings of all factors classified in five categories, producing risk levels of non-flood, low, moderate, high and very high. It was found that non-flood accounted for 1252.2 km² (15.7%) of the total, low for 1032.3 km² (13%), moderate for 1596 km² (20%), high for 2607.4 km² (32.8%) and very high flood risk area for 1471.4 km² (18.5%). The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Turkey mapped the flood area for the Orontes river basin from field measurement and their observations were compared with a generated flood risk map. The comparison showed satisfactory results because observed flood area was determined to be in very high flood risk region in the flood risk map. Thus, flood risk area identification using MCDA is possibly suitable for flood planning and management. 

Keywords:

Flood risk map, multi-criteria decision analyses, Orontes river basin, Turkey

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2012
Volume: 10
Issue: 3&4
Category: Environment
Pages: 895-899

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