Flood Risk Assessment Based on Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation Method in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Area, China

Guangpeng Wang, Yong Liu, Ziying Hu, Yanli Lyu, Guoming Zhang, Jifu Liu, Yun Liu, Yu Gu, Xichen Huang, Hao Zheng, Qingyan Zhang, Zongze Tong, Chang Hong and Lianyou Liu
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Guangpeng Wang: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yong Liu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Ziying Hu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yanli Lyu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Guoming Zhang: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Jifu Liu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yun Liu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yu Gu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Xichen Huang: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Hao Zheng: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Qingyan Zhang: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Zongze Tong: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Chang Hong: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Lianyou Liu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-30

Abstract: Flooding is one of the most devastating natural events and leads to enormous and recurring loss of life, properties, and resources around the globe. With climate change and accelerating urbanization, flood disasters in China have increasingly affected the sustainable development of metropolitan areas. Risk assessment is an essential step in flood management and disaster mitigation, which provide a quantitative measure of flood risk. However, the difficulty of flood risk zoning is dealing with the uncertainty of the evaluation process and the complicated non-linear relationship between indicators and risk levels. To address this issue, a fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) method based on combined weight (CW) was utilized in this paper to generate flood risk maps at a grid-scale (1 × 1 km). For the case study in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolitan area (BTH) in China, fourteen indicators were selected to construct the flood risk assessment model based on the FSE approach integrated with ArcGIS. The research demonstrates that moderate, high, and very high risk zones are distributed in the southeast fluvial plain of the BTH area, accounting for 31.36% of the total land area. Meanwhile, low and very-low risk zones occupy 68.64% of the total land area, and are primarily located in the high plateau and mountain regions in the northwest. We analyzed the risk level of each county and proposed risk mitigation measures based on field investigations. The verified risk assessment results were spatially consistent with the historical flood disaster records and loss positions, indicating the accuracy and reliability of the risk assessment map using the FSE approach. Compared with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) TAR (Third Assessment Report) and AR5 (Fifth Assessment Report) methods, FSE has significant advantages in handling uncertainty, complexity, and the non-linear relationship between indices and risk grades. This study provides a novel quantitative method for flood risk assessment in metropolitan areas and practical implications for urban flood management.

Keywords: risk assessment; fuzzy synthetic evaluation; combined weight; metropolitan area; flood mitigation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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