Hazard Ratings of Debris Flow Evacuation Sites in Hillside Communities of Ershui Township, Changhua County, Taiwan

Global warming in recent years has resulted in climate change. To cope with future climate change and natural environment changes, much of our planning and thinking needs to be adjusted. To this end, safety and rapidness of evacuation have become primary research goals. In this study, geographic information and fuzzy expert systems are applied to debris flow evacuation sites in Ershui Township, Changhua County, for evaluating their hazard ratings. After a geographic information system is used to overlay the environmental sensitivity, FLO-2D is applied to simulate debris flow situations, and the results are utilized to establish a fuzzy expert system that successfully evaluates the hazard ratings of such sites in hillside areas. For future applications, another evaluation reference based on original evacuation sites and routes or evacuation mechanisms and disaster prevention models is proposed as a source of essential assistance to relevant sectors.