Flood disaster management with the use of AHP

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a decision-making tool for emergency planning and response particularly for flood accidents. The proposed tool is a simulator (i.e., computer based software) capable of identifying the 'emergency machine' lacks, allowing also for improvement of specific areas of the emergency system, such as technical equipment, human factors, protocols, response time and actions sequence. The present work contributes to the ongoing effort for better protecting human life, land, property and the environment by improved flood management techniques and was elaborated within the pre-emergencies EC funded project. The developed tool can be used as a technical instrument to simulate the organisational and inter-organisational asset of a multi-actor civil protection group with the aim of highlighting strong and vulnerable elements of the civil protection structures. This is achieved through the use of a number of indices pertaining to characteristic parameters of the specific emergency operation distributed on four sub-layers of detail, which are categorised through the use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP approach supports decision making in emergency preparedness through alternatives structured into a weighed multi-criteria framework.