Abstract

Image Courtesy of Sherri Tran


A spatial analysis of flooding in the Central Alaska region was performed to determine flood risk areas. A danger zone map was created using multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) with the affected areas defined as the top 30% of our weighted sum results. The factors that were used in our MCE include slope, water accumulation, presence of wetland, precipitation, drainage density, landcover (vegetation), and soil types. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to prioritize the relative importance (weights) of various criteria. Within our study area, a total of 57,448km^2 affected area was obtained after reclassiffication. Both the Tanana River subbasin and Lower Yukon subbasin had substantial areas with high flood risk with the percentage of area affected being 14.35% and 22.64% respectively. Our results suggest that flood prevention efforts should be focused on Tanana River and Lower Yukon subbasins. The total population within the high flood risk zone is 36830 people, and the total length of infrastructure affected is 4886 km.