Flood hazard zoning in the Ilam city using AHP and GIS

Developing urbanization and changing hydrological conditions of natural streams increases the flooding risk. This study tries to do flood hazard zoning in the Ilam city and determine the critical area of the urban regions against flooding by using AHP method and GIS environment. For this purpose, the parameters of the curve number, height, distance from the river, geology, land use, population, slope, soil, building density, worn texture buildings and accumulated flow as effective parameters in flooding hazard in Ilam city selected and of these parameters weighted by using Expert Choice software. The result of the Expert Choice software is transferred to the environment of GIS software and flood hazard map of study area prepared. Results of the study and flood hazard map show that areas with very low-risk, low risk, intermediate-risk, high-risk and very high-risk form the 0.8%, 8.5%, 49.6%, 32.54% and 8.56% of the of Ilam city area, respectively. Also, the central area of the city has the highest risk and the probability of occurrence of the flood due to the high density of population and residential areas in this area and its proximity to the seasonal rivers and old part of the city. Therefore, by examining the results of Expert Choice software, it is possible to identify the most effective factors in the occurrence of flood risk and prioritize them to address management solutions to eliminate or mitigate the effects of these factors.