Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) applied to flood susceptibility in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil

Lucas Guimarães Da Silva,Celso De Souza Catelani,Marcelo Dos Santos Targa

doi:10.4136/ambi-agua.2574

Lucas Guimarães Da Silva, Celso De Souza Catelani + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4136/ambi-agua.2574

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Abstract

The changes in environmental factors in a hydrographic basin, mainly in the urban environment, enable different scenarios than the change of parameters in climatic, physical, political, and socioeconomic factors. Those changes may have immediate effects on indigenous populations, often making them vulnerable to the risk of flooding. This article evaluates the vulnerability to flooding in the municipality of São José dos Campos, State of São Paulo, Brazil using multicriteria analysis and geoprocessing techniques. Quantum GIS (QGIS) was used in the manipulation and processing of vector and matrix data related to the terrain slope, hydrography, geotechnics, and data history of flooding (2009 - 2018) in São José dos Campos. The hierarchy and criteria weighting processes were carried out, as well as the zoning of areas at risk of flooding. Thus, it was found that 23.81% and 2.17% of the municipal territory has high and very high susceptibility to flooding. It can be concluded that the combined use of multicriteria analysis and geoprocessing is an effective contribution to assist the management of public policies in order to obtain more assertive decisions in the prevention or reduction of flood risks.

Highlights

The changes in environmental factors in a hydrographic basin, mainly in the urban environment, enable different scenarios of land use and occupation than the alteration of parameters in climatic, physical, political, and socioeconomic factors
Among the methods developed in the Multicriteria Decisions Analysis environment, the most well-known is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method developed by the mathematician Thomas Saaty in the 1960s
The use of a multicriteria analysis method is recent in Brazil, and has been applied mainly to environmental problems which, due to the possibility of using specific criteria for each analysis, the application of the AHP method can be found in several studies, among them: geoenvironmental (Santos et al, 2007), risk of landslides (Faria et al 2016; Meirelles et al, 2018), socio-environmental vulnerability (Marques et al, 2018) and susceptibility of soil to erosion (Santos et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

The changes in environmental factors in a hydrographic basin, mainly in the urban environment, enable different scenarios of land use and occupation than the alteration of parameters in climatic, physical, political, and socioeconomic factors. These changes can have immediate effects on indigenous populations, often making them vulnerable to environmental risks. The use of a multicriteria analysis method is recent in Brazil, and has been applied mainly to environmental problems which, due to the possibility of using specific criteria for each analysis, the application of the AHP method can be found in several studies, among them: geoenvironmental (Santos et al, 2007), risk of landslides (Faria et al 2016; Meirelles et al, 2018), socio-environmental vulnerability (Marques et al, 2018) and susceptibility of soil to erosion (Santos et al, 2019)

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