GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Flash Flood Hazard and Risk Assessment: A Case Study of the Eastern Minya Watershed, Egypt

Abstract

Flash floods are considered one of the most devastating and frequent extreme climatological natural hazards in the world. El Minya is one of the most vulnerable areas in Egypt for flash flood problems. It was affected by several hazardous historical flash flood events. These events could lead to both catastrophic losses of life and severe damage to the infrastructures of the study area. The study area is located in the middle of Egypt, about 240 km south of Cairo. It is situated along the Limestone Plateau facing El Minia governorate. The main objective of this study is to assess the risk of flash flood hazard on the human activities in the study area. Integration of remote sensing; geographic information systems, analytical hierarchy process, and the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques were applied in this study. Eight different significant effective factors collected from multisource geospatial data, including lithology, hydrology, topography, soil type, land cover, and rainfall data, were selected to evaluate the flood risk map. Remote sensing imagery was used for land use/cover mapping to detect the vulnerable human activities. ArcGIS-based weighted overlay modeling was used to combine the criteria to calculate the final decision map.