Assessing flood vulnerability using a rule-based fuzzy system

Population growth and urbanization in the last decades have increased the vulnerability of properties and societies in flood-prone areas. Vulnerability analysis is one of the main factors used to determine the necessary measures of flood risk reduction in floodplains. At present, the vulnerability of natural disasters is analyzed by defining the various physical and social indices. This study presents a model based on a fuzzy rule-based system to address various ambiguities and uncertainties from natural variability, and human knowledge and preferences in vulnerability analysis. The proposed method is applied for a small watershed as a case study and the obtained results are compared with one of the index approaches. Both approaches present the same ranking for the sub-basin's vulnerability in the watershed. Finally, using the scores of vulnerability in different sub-basins, a vulnerability map of the watershed is presented.