Screening watersheds of Ardabil province concerning flood vulnerability

In recent years, the world has faced many challenges. Among the natural phenomena, the flood effect has attracted a lot of attention due to its adverse effects. More than half of the destruction and damage caused by global flooding occurs in the Asian continent, which causes loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and creates conditions of panic in communities. Increasing resilience is critical for urban systems to cope with and minimize the risks of flooding. This issue is certainly more important in Iran because the increase in the frequency of floods is a significant concern for many regions of this country. In Iran, despite the existence of much research, this issue has not yet been fully covered by the scientific community. Therefore, the current research is planned with the aim of measuring flood vulnerability in the 26 watersheds of Ardabil Province based on 19 criteria and three different factors. To calculate the criteria, the meteorological and hydrological data, shape files, accessible GIS maps, statistical yearbooks, and previous studies were used as well. In addition, Shannon's entropy was used for criteria weighting and the VIKOR method was used for watershed ranking based on the exposure, sensitivity, resilience, and flood vulnerability. The results showed that Mashiran, Firozabad, and Gilandeh watersheds in terms of exposure factor, and Hir, Barogh, and Lai watersheds in terms of sensitivity factor had the highest ranks. Moreover, in terms of resilience factor, Polesoltani, Hajahmedkandi, and Barogh watersheds are highly resilient against floods respectively with ranks of 1 to 3. The results of flood vulnerability ranking also showed that Doost Bigloo, Mashiran, and Samian watersheds are the most vulnerable with ranks 1, 2, and 3.