Flood Susceptibility Analysis with Integrated Geographic Information System and Analytical Hierarchy Process: A Multi-Criteria Framework for Risk Assessment and Mitigation

Flooding is among the most destructive natural disasters globally, and it inflicts severe damage on both natural environments and human-made structures. The frequency of floods has been increasing due to unplanned urbanization, climate change, and changes in land use. Flood susceptibility maps help identify at-risk areas, supporting informed decisions in disaster preparedness, risk management, and mitigation. This study aims to generate a flood susceptibility map for Davidson County of Tennessee using an integrated geographic information system (GIS) and analytical hierarchical process (AHP). In this study, ten flood causative factors are employed to generate flood-prone zones. AHP, a form of weighted multi-criteria decision analysis, is applied to assess the relative impact weights of these flood causative factors. Subsequently, these factors are integrated into ArcGIS Pro (Version 3.3) to create a flood susceptibility map for the study area using a weighted overlay approach. The resulting flood susceptibility map classified the county into five susceptibility zones: very low (17.48%), low (41.89%), moderate (37.53%), high (2.93%), and very high (0.17%). The FEMA flood hazard map of Davidson County is used to validate the flood susceptibility map created from this approach. Ultimately, this comparison reinforced the accuracy and reliability of the flood susceptibility assessment for the study area using integrated GIS and AHP approach.