Assessment of flood hazard areas using Analytical Hierarchy Process over the Lower Yom Basin, Sukhothai Province

Abstract

Flood hazard map is essential tool to assess susceptibility of flood prone area. The present study focuses on an assessment of flood hazard areas in Sukhothai province of Thailand where it has suffered from flood in every year with different extents. Spatial analysis in GIS environment has been applied for the estimation of flood risk zones in which six relevant physical factors have been selected namely, rainfall amount, slope, elevation, river density, land use and soil permeability. The relative importance of physical factors has been compared in pairwise matrix to gain the weight values during the process of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The flood hazard zones have been mapped according to their weights. It has been found that Muang, Kongkrailat, Khirimat and Sisamrong districts are identified as the high risk zones of flood.