article · Water
Flash floods present severe socio-economic, environmental, and infrastructural hazards, intensifying due to climate change and urban growth. To address this, an integrated flood assessment approach was developed and tested in the arid South Khorasan Province of Iran. The framework combines analytical hierarchy process-weighted linear combination and fuzzy-ordered weighted averaging techniques, evaluating fifteen environmental factors such as rainfall, slope, land cover, and proximity to rivers. Initial modelling classified 17.54 percent of the region as high risk and 19.48 percent as very high risk, while fuzzy scenario testing revealed that up to 98.79 percent of the territory could face high sensitivity under the most extreme conditions. The approach achieved an area under the curve accuracy score of 0.83. Densely populated and industrialised zones near rivers exhibited the greatest exposure, highlighting the framework's utility for scalable flood risk management and climate adaptation strategies.
Flash floods pose substantial threats to human settlements, industry, and infrastructure in arid regions. As climate change and urban development amplify flood frequency, standard evaluation models can struggle with uncertainty. This integrated method provides planners and decision-makers with tested scenario-modelling tools, enabling more resilient infrastructure design and targeted disaster risk reduction in hydrologically vulnerable territories.
The integrated framework could be used by regional environmental planners, municipal authorities, and infrastructure development agencies seeking to map flash flood risks in arid zones. At an applied and tested stage of development, validated against regional field data with 75 percent scenario accuracy, the methodology can inform land-use planning software, risk assessment consultancy services, and local climate adaptation frameworks aligned with sustainable development goals.
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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.
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DOI: 10.3390/w17091276
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