Potential Flood Hazard Mapping Based on GIS and Analytical Hierarchy Process

Flooding is one of the most common natural dangers occurring almost everywhere. Remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) are common and effective tools for hydrological analysis assessment and hazard management. Using GIS and remote sensing techniques, this study aimed to identify flood hazard maps in the Diyala governorate with a higher vulnerability to floods. Nine influencing parameters were collected, including elevation, slope, distance from the road, distance from the river, rainfall, drainage density, land use and land cover, normalized vegetation index, and topographic wetness index. The collected data were processed using GIS software and then relative weights were estimated using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach to produce a flood map. According to the findings of this study, the largest zone, about 64% of the study area, faces moderate potential flood hazard, a very small area of less than 1% faces very high and very low potential flood dangers, and approximately 35% of the study area is subjected to high and low flood hazard.