Multiple criteria decision making and decision support systems for flood risk management

Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) is a collection of methodologies to compare, select, or rank multiple alternatives that typically involve incommensurate attributes. MCDM is well-suited for eliciting and modeling the flood preferences of stakeholders and for improving the coordination among flood agencies, organizations and affected citizens. A flood decision support system (DSS) architecture is put forth that integrates the latest advances in MCDM, remote sensing, GIS, hydrologic models, and real-time flood information systems. The analytic network process (ANP) is discussed with application to short-term flood management options for the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. It is shown that DSS and MCDM can improve flood risk planning and management under uncertainty by providing data displays, analytical results, and model output to summarize critical flood information.