Three-reference-point based group ELECTRE III method for urban flood resilience evaluation

Abstract

In order to cope with the growing problem of flood disasters, it is crucial to improve the urban flood resilience. Hence, this paper develops a novel evaluation methodology to find the weak links and capacity gaps of urban flood resilience. Firstly, according to the three periods of flood, the urban flood resilience evaluation indicator system is divided into the predictive capacity subsystem before the flood, the absorptive and coping capacity subsystem and the recovery capacity subsystem during the flood, and the adaptive capacity subsystem after the flood. This indicator system also creatively introduces the density of hydrological and meteorological station networks into the predictive capacity subsystem, and divides the adaptive capacity more meticulously into learning capacity at the governmental and individual-society levels. Secondly, a novel three-reference-point (T-R-P) based group ELECTRE III method is proposed to rank the flood resilience of different cities. This method integrates subjective and objective information to obtain more reasonable expert weights, and then sets thresholds with T-R-P to obtain more comprehensive and objective evaluation results. Furthermore, the proposed methodology is applied to six flood-prone cities in China, and its practicality and availability are verified through comparative analysis with other three evaluation methods and sensitivity analysis of the indicator weights. Finally, based on the results, targeted suggestions are made to enhance the flood resilience of the six cities.