Title: Flood disaster management with the use of AHP

Authors: Zoe Nivolianitou; Barbara Synodinou; Davide Manca

Addresses: System Reliability & Industrial Safety Lab, Institute of Nuclear and Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy and Safety, National Centre of Scientific Research 'Demokritos', Greece ' System Reliability & Industrial Safety Lab, Institute of Nuclear and Radiological Sciences and Technology, Energy and Safety, National Centre of Scientific Research 'Demokritos', Greece ' Chemistry, Material and Chemical Engineering Department 'Giulio Natta', Politecnico di Milano, Italy

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.

Keywords: flooding; floods; emergency management; multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; simulation; flood disaster management; emergency planning; flood management; technical equipment; human factors; protocols; response time; action sequences; civil protection structures; emergency preparedness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCDM.2015.067943

International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making, 2015 Vol.5 No.1/2, pp.152 - 164

Received: 02 Feb 2013
Accepted: 18 Nov 2013
Published online: 10 Mar 2015 *

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