Application of MCDM methods for flood susceptibility assessment and evaluation the impacts of past experiences on flood preparedness

This research is analyzed the flood hazard using two ensemble models in Mazandaran Province, Iran and assess how the experience contributed to community flood preparedness by household surveys. For this purpose, two approaches of Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) combined with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and weight of evidence (WOE) models were applied. Applying eight effective factors, including rainfall, distance from rivers, slope, soil, geology, elevation, drainage density, and land use, the flood risk zoning map was prepared with the help of Geographic Information System. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) for test sample set was 87.14% and 83.24% for TOPSIS-based and MABAC-based models, respectively. Regression analysis found a negative correlation between past flood experience and flood preparedness of residents, consistent with cluster analysis. This indicates that local people had not learned much from previous experiences of flood catastrophes.