Evaluation the Efficiency of AHP Model in Prioritizing of Barajin Sub Watersheds from Flood Potential Viewpoint

Flood is one of the natural hazards that causes numerous financial and life damages each year. Therefore, flood potential prioritizing is crucial to reduce the damages caused by it. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in flood potential prioritizing of Barajin sub-catchments. So, flood potential of sub-catchments was determined using AHP and the results are compared with the outputs of the HEC-HMS model as observed data. The results showed that in addition to full compliance of the two maps, there is a significant correlation (0.9299 and 0.934) between flooding potential ranks and peak flood discharge ranks with the return periods of 25 and 50 years of sub-catchments. The weights of AHP were also showed that in the flood of sub-catchments, generally, hydro-climatic criteria (weight = 0.65) is more important than morphometric criteria (weight = 0.35); and the rainfall intensity is the most important sub-criteria (weight = 0.373). Based on the final ranking, sub-catchments of 5, 3, and 4 that are located in upland and mountainous areas, have high flood potential due to the high weight of tow sub-criteria, one rainfall intensity, and the other 25-years rainfall. The results of this study could be a good guide for controlling floods of the study area in addition to understanding the processes governing the watershed.