An upgraded GIS-based multi-criteria decision-making approach for flood control prioritization mapping: Case study of West Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex

Flood risk management in rapidly urbanizing areas requires frameworks that can simultaneously address flood susceptibility and vulnerability while accommodating future landscape and climate dynamics. This study proposes an upgraded GIS-based multi-criteria decision-making framework to develop flood control prioritization maps by integrating both susceptibility and vulnerability indices. The framework considers a wide range of conditioning factors across environmental, infrastructural, and socio-economic domains, and introduces four novel factors—dam density, road traffic density, bridge traffic density, and bridge vulnerability—to better capture the two-way interactions between infrastructure and flood risk. Factor weights were derived using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Methodological innovations include the application of Kernel Density functions instead of traditional Euclidean distance to represent spatial influence, a new normalization approach for factor rating to reduce subjectivity, and a detailed GIS-based procedure for generating Curve Numbers (CN). Beyond current conditions, the framework also evaluates dynamic flood risk patterns under a 2045 scenario by incorporating projected changes in extreme rainfall depth, impervious surfaces, and traffic patterns. The approach was tested in the rapidly developing west Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and validated against flood inventory data using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and, the Area Under the Curve (AUC) shows an acceptable value of 0.659. Results demonstrate the framework's ability to streamline flood mitigation planning and support decision-making in urban development under climate change and urban sprawl pressures. The proposed framework is transferable to other metropolitan regions seeking to enhance resilience through integrated flood risk management. • Prioritize flood prone area by combining “susceptibility” and “vulnerability”. • Infrastructure and flood risk influence each other in a two-way relationship. • Kernel density performed well showing the diminishing impact of a feature on flood. • A rescaling method was proposed to bypass threshed selection of flood factor rating. • West DFW is expected to have a manifest flood susceptibility increase by year 2045.