Risk Assessment Model for Pluvial Flood Prediction Using Fuzzy-Based Classification Technique

Both developed and developing countries are promoting risk management and refining the ability to alleviate the effects of disaster both man-made and natural, which have become a threat to human life and the world’s economy. The variability in climate change, rapid urbanization and fast-growing socio-economic development has naturally increased the risk associated with flooding. A recent report showed that flood have affected more individuals than any other category of disaster in the 21st century with the highest percentage of 43% of all disaster events in 2019 and Africa been the second vulnerable continent after Asia. So, it is highly important to devise a scientific method for flood risk reduction since it cannot be eradicated. Machine learning can improve the risk management. The paper proposes a pluvial flood detection and prediction system based on machine learning techniques. The proposed model will employ a fuzzy rule-based classification approach for pluvial flood risk assessment. Keywords: Machine Learning, Pluvial Flood, Risk, Fuzzy Rule-Based, Prediction DOI: 10.7176/CEIS/12-1-07 Publication date: January 31st 202

Multicriteria analysis for flood mapping of Sungai Pahang

The occurrence of floods is a natural disaster incidence that depends on the geographical, physical and rainfall. This study aims to investigate the geospatial analysis of flood in Sungai Pahang, Pahang. The objectives of the study are i) to analyse the use of factors for multi criteria analysis, and ii) to prepare a flood hazard mapping in Sungai Pahang, Pahang. Method used for this study is a multi-criteria analysis using Geographical Information System. Four important factors were used in this research; distance from the river, gradient, land cover and height of the land form. The finding show that the highly dense areas (such as Pekan and Kuantan) located close to the river are located inside the highest susceptible areas, which can give a high loss to the inhabitants in those particular areas. Thus, the recommendation suggests that determination of flood-prone areas of flood level 1 (protected area), level 2 (moderate sensitive rank), level 3 (controlled development area) and level 4 (development area) can be implement by the local authority in practice of development planning work

A GIS-based multi-criteria decision analysis approach for public school site selection in Surabaya, Indonesia

Surabaya is one of the old cities of Indonesia and has been inhabited since the Colonial era. It has been continuously growing until today leading to expansion of its area to the south, east, and west. Unfortunately, it has not been supported by the addition of new public schools, particularly at the secondary and high school levels. This research aimed to help the government by determining the suitability level of the whole area of the city for locating a new school and for evaluating current school locations. This research proposed six spatial factors: administration, population, transportation, land-use, student flow, and public preferences. Each factor was represented as raster file built from primary and secondary tabular and spatial data. Each factor then was weighted from the multi-criteria decision analysis step using the analytical hierarchy process method. The results show recommended and non-recommended areas in Surabaya for locating a new school building. This research integrated GIS analysis, web-GIS application, public participation, and MCDA to identify the best solution for this case

A novel rule-based approach in mapping landslide susceptibility

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Despite recent advances in developing landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) techniques, resultant maps are often not transparent, and susceptibility rules are barely made explicit. This weakens the proper understanding of conditioning criteria involved in shaping landslide events at the local scale. Further, a high level of subjectivity in re-classifying susceptibility scores into various classes often downgrades the quality of those maps. Here, we apply a novel rule-based system as an alternative approach for LSM. Therein, the initially assembled rules relate landslide-conditioning factors within individual rule-sets. This is implemented without the complication of applying logical or relational operators. To achieve this, first, Shannon entropy was employed to assess the priority order of landslide-conditioning factors and the uncertainty of each rule within the corresponding rule-sets. Next, the rule-level uncertainties were mapped and used to asses the reliability of the susceptibility map at the local scale (i.e., at pixel-level). A set of If-Then rules were applied to convert susceptibility values to susceptibility classes, where less level of subjectivity is guaranteed. In a case study of Northwest Tasmania in Australia, the performance of the proposed method was assessed by receiver operating characteristics’ area under the curve (AUC). Our method demonstrated promising performance with AUC of 0.934. This was a result of a transparent rule-based approach, where priorities and state/value of landslide-conditioning factors for each pixel were identified. In addition, the uncertainty of susceptibility rules can be readily accessed, interpreted, and replicated. The achieved results demonstrate that the proposed rule-based method is beneficial to derive insights into LSM processes

GIS-based multicriteria analysis as decision support in flood risk management

In this report we develop a GIS-based multicriteria flood risk assessment and mapping approach. This approach has the ability a) to consider also flood risks which are not measured in monetary terms, b) to show the spatial distribution of these multiple risks and c) to deal with uncertainties in criteria values and to show their influence on the overall assessment. It can furthermore be used to show the spatial distribution of the effects of risk reduction measures. The approach is tested for a pilot study at the River Mulde in Saxony, Germany. Therefore, a GISdataset of economic as well as social and environmental risk criteria is built up. Two multicriteria decision rules, a disjunctive approach and an additive weighting approach are used to come to an overall assessment and mapping of flood risk in the area. Both the risk calculation and mapping of single criteria as well as the multicriteria analysis are supported by a software tool (FloodCalc) which was developed for this task. --

Earthquake risk assessment using an integrated Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process with Artificial Neural Networks based on GIS: A case study of Sanandaj in Iran

Earthquakes are natural phenomena, which induce natural hazard that seriously threatens urban areas, despite significant advances in retrofitting urban buildings and enhancing the knowledge and ability of experts in natural disaster control. Iran is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and analyze the extent of earthquake vulnerability in relation to demographic, environmental, and physical criteria. An earthquake risk assessment (ERA) map was created by using a Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process coupled with an Artificial Neural Networks (FAHP-ANN) model generating five vulnerability classes. Combining the application of a FAHP-ANN with a geographic information system (GIS) enabled to assign weights to the layers of the earthquake vulnerability criteria. The model was applied to Sanandaj City in Iran, located in the seismically active Sanandaj-Sirjan zone which is frequently affected by devastating earthquakes. The Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) model was implemented in the IDRISI software and 250 points were validated for grades 0 and 1. The validation process revealed that the proposed model can produce an earthquake probability map with an accuracy of 95%. A comparison of the results attained by using a FAHP, AHP and MLP model shows that the hybrid FAHP-ANN model proved flexible and reliable when generating the ERA map. The FAHP-ANN model accurately identified the highest earthquake vulnerability in densely populated areas with dilapidated building infrastructure. The findings of this study are useful for decision makers with a scientific basis to develop earthquake risk management strategies

GIS-Based Flood Risk Zoning Based On Data-Driven Models

Increasing the occurrence of floods, especially in cities, and the risks to human, financial, and environmental risks due to its, make flood risk zoning of great importance. The purpose of this study is to estimate the flood risk of the Maneh and Samalghan based on determining effective criteria and spatial and non-spatial data-driven models. The criteria used in this research include Modified Fournier Index, Topographic Position Index, Curve Number, Flow Accumulation, Slope, Digital elevation model, Topographic Wetness Index, Vertical Overland Flow Distance, Horizontal Overland Flow Distance, and Normalized difference vegetation index. The novelty of this study is to present new combination approaches to determine the effective criteria in flood risk zoning (Maneh and Samalghan). In this regard, the geographically weighted regression (GWR) with exponential and bi-square kernels and artificial neural network (ANN) combined with a binary particle swarm optimization algorithm (BPSO). The best value of the fitness function (1-R2) for ANN, GWR with the exponential kernel, and GWR with bi-square kernel was obtained 0.1757, 0.0461, and 0.0097, respectively, Which indicates higher compatibility of the bi-square kernel than the other models. It was also found that the criteria used have a significant effect on the rate of flooding in the study area

Earth Observation in the EMMENA Region: Scoping Review of Current Applications and Knowledge Gaps

Earth observation (EO) techniques have significantly evolved over time, covering a wide range of applications in different domains. The scope of this study is to review the research conducted on EO in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa (EMMENA) region and to identify the main knowledge gaps. We searched through the Web of Science database for papers published between 2018 and 2022 for EO studies in the EMMENA. We categorized the papers in the following thematic areas: atmosphere, water, agriculture, land, disaster risk reduction (DRR), cultural heritage, energy, marine safety and security (MSS), and big Earth data (BED); 6647 papers were found with the highest number of publications in the thematic areas of BED (27%) and land (22%). Most of the EMMENA countries are surrounded by sea, yet there was a very small number of studies on MSS (0.9% of total number of papers). This study detected a gap in fundamental research in the BED thematic area. Other future needs identified by this study are the limited availability of very high-resolution and near-real-time remote sensing data, the lack of harmonized methodologies and the need for further development of models, algorithms, early warning systems, and services

Modelling of Floods in Urban Areas

This Special Issue publishes the latest advances and developments concerning the modelling of flooding in urban areas and contributes to our scientific understanding of the flooding processes and the appropriate evaluation of flood impacts. This issue contains contributions of novel methodologies including flood forecasting methods, data acquisition techniques, experimental research in urban drainage systems and/or sustainable drainage systems, and new numerical and simulation approaches in nine papers with contributions from over forty authors