In flood susceptibility assessment, is it scientifically correct to represent flood events as a point vector format and create flood inventory map?

Abstract

In this discussion article, we try to highlight and discuss the wrong way for representing an areal phenomenon “flood” as a point vector format in GIS-based flood susceptibility studies and creating what is called “flood inventory map”. Two examples from the literature were taken to show that a flood event cannot be represented by point except with very small map scales (1: 10000000) and this flood event should be with other flood events to form the “flood inventory map”. With the help of the other two examples from the previous studies, this article showed the wrong used way for representing flood worldwide and suggested an appropriate method for mapping flood susceptibility.