Assessment of flood susceptibility in Sylhet using analytical hierarchy process and geospatial technique

Abstract

In Bangladesh, flooding has been one of the most devastating natural disasters, and the susceptibility assessment of flood is a major precondition for minimizing the impact and making a sustainable future. Therefore, identifying and assessing susceptibility is essential to reduce the number of casualties that result from flooding events in the future. The primary challenge in flood risk assessment is developing a systematic understanding of all potential damages associated with a flood event. Keeping this goal in mind, the present study focuses on estimating the flood susceptibility in Sylhet district of Bangladesh. This study employs the combination of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for Flood Susceptibility Assessment (FSA) of Sylhet district in Bangladesh. The study examines the significance of every element involved in FSA and provides explicit descriptions for each of them. Applying multiple-criteria computation techniques, the analysis focuses on computing inundation-related calculations and generating map depicting flood susceptible zones. Concerning flooding event, the district Sylhet exhibits varying degrees of flood susceptibility, with 14.71 % of the area categorized as having very high susceptibility, 18.70 % as high susceptibility, 25.17 % as medium susceptibility, 24.94 % as low susceptibility, and 16.47 % of the study areas identified with very low susceptibility. The present research on flood susceptibility assessment could help to minimize the losses and lower the risk associated with flooding.