Harnessing AHP and Fuzzy Scenarios for Resilient Flood Management in Arid Environments: Challenges and Pathways Toward Sustainability

Flash floods rank among the most devastating natural hazards, causing widespread socio-economic, environmental, and infrastructural damage globally. Hence, innovative management approaches are required to mitigate their increasing frequency and intensity, driven by factors such as climate change and urbanization. Accordingly, this study introduced an integrated flood assessment approach (IFAA) for sustainable management of flood risks by integrating the analytical hierarchy process-weighted linear combination (AHP-WLC) and fuzzy-ordered weighted averaging (FOWA) methods. The IFAA was applied in South Khorasan Province, Iran, an arid and flood-prone region. Fifteen controlling factors, including rainfall (RF), slope (SL), land use/land cover (LU/LC), and distance to rivers (DTR), were processed using the collected data. The AHP-WLC method classified the region into flood susceptibility zones: very low (10.23%), low (23.14%), moderate (29.61%), high (17.54%), and very high (19.48%). The FOWA technique ensured these findings by introducing optimistic and pessimistic fuzzy scenarios of flood risk. The most extreme scenario indicated that 98.79% of the area was highly sensitive to flooding, while less than 5% was deemed low-risk under conservative scenarios. Validation of the IFAA approach demonstrated its reliability, with the AHP-WLC method achieving an area under curve (AUC) of 0.83 and an average accuracy of ~75% across all fuzzy scenarios. Findings revealed elevated flood dangers in densely populated and industrialized areas, particularly in the northern and southern regions, which were influenced by proximity to rivers. Therefore, the study also addressed challenges linked to sustainable development goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 13 (climate action), proposing adaptive strategies to meet 60% of its targets. This research can offer a scalable framework for flood risk management, providing actionable insights for hydrologically vulnerable regions worldwide.