Prioritization of infrastructures' Criticality: A Multi-criteria Decision Analysis vs. Using Vulnerability Curves

Classification of civil Infrastructures could be important for giving priority to the most critical ones in regard to allocating funds in the flood hazard mitigation and recovery processes. In the current study, a methodology has been proposed based on synthetic vulnerability curves, which emphasizes functional vulnerability to floods with an eye to structural/non-structural damages. On the other hand, a kind of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method has been proposed to prioritize the critical infrastructures with respect to the sustainability indicators. The proposed methods have been tested in two flood-prone areas, l.e. the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia crossed by the river Zujevina and the city of Berat, Albania, crossed by the river Osum. A comparison of the two methods represents that both methods introduced the "roads" as the most critical infrastructure among all in Berat. In the case of Sarajevo, "roads" are proved to be the least vulnerable of all given critical infrastructures by the two methods. For both methods, the final values of criticality for the different critical infrastructures are very close to each other, and thus, not a big difference can be emphasized among their level of vulnerability to floods.