Determining Flood-Prone Areas Using Multi-Criteria Decision Models in Bagheran Region of Birjand

Floods occur in arid and semi-arid regions due to heavy rains and lack of vegetation which cause great loss of life and property throughout the world. Therefore, determining flood-prone areas and high-risk areas can be of great help in flood management and control. This study was conducted to determine flood-prone areas using multi-criteria decision making methods in Bagheran area of ​​Birjand City, South Khorasan Province. First, 10 effective parameters in floods were selected based on the opinions of experts and their relative importance was obtained using AHP and BWM methods. The results showed that the parameters of topographic moisture index and distance from waterway had the lowest score in both AHP and BWM methods, so that the rain parameter with relative importance of 0.265 and 0.137 had the highest score in AHP and BWM methods and had the highest impact. The zoning results were divided into five classes: very low, low, medium, high and very high. In both methods, high class had the highest area and very low class had the lowest area. The high class in the BWM method covers about 48% of the area, which can cause irreparable damage to residential areas downstream of Birjand.