Fuzzy expert system-based framework for flood management in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper presents a fuzzy expert system-based framework for flood management in Saudi Arabia that helps the civil defense (CD) authority in both preparing their flood management capabilities and responding to scalable levels of flood risk. One of the most important type of flood management capabilities is training capabilities, the adequacy of training capabilities of emergency responders is a critical factor that influences on flood risk management, even considering other types of capabilities such as equipment and infrastructure. However, due to the lack of adequate training capabilities in place to address dynamic change of flood risk and vulnerabilities in some areas, emergency readiness for floods has been critically affected and resulted in ineffective response and mutual aid. Here, the study aimed to aid decision-makers in the Saudi CD Authority to reduce inappropriate readiness of training capabilities in some critical zones and maintain the levels of readiness using a proposed fuzzy expert system-based framework, which is named the capability evaluation and readiness (CER) framework. The developed CER framework includes a new fuzzy expert system, which is named the intelligent capability evaluation and readiness (ICER) system. CER framework uses three key elements for readiness evaluation and addressing needs related to training capabilities; the records of the provided training and exercises; the targeted standard and policy of readiness and mutual aid; and risk assessment of each zone and existing hazard and vulnerability (HV) factors within a zone. The results of evaluation by interviews indicted high agreement on effectiveness and productivity of the CER framework, however, it is recommended that additional stakeholders are included in order to have comprehensive information regarding others HV factors. In addition, questionnaires shown that more than 60% of the respondents believe that the ICER system is an effective tool for flood response, however, regarding the readiness of the training capabilities, more that 17% of the respondents believe that the ICER system is not effective tool to improving the readiness of the training capabilities.