Research on Flood Risk Zoning based on Information Diffusion and Entropy Theory in the Huaihe River Basin, China

The flood risk assessment is a critical problem in China due to climate change and frequent flood disasters. However, due to the fact that flood historical data are relatively insufficient for flood risk assessment, it is quite difficult to assess the flood risk. In this paper, we propose a risk assessment method based on the information diffusion which can turn a single-valued sample into a set of numerical-valued samples according to evaluation criterions. The index weights are determined by integrating the entropy weight method and the AHP (analytic hierarchy process) method. We evaluate the regional flood risk occurred in the Huaihe River basin in 2007 based on historical data. The risk grades and zoning of five regions in the Huaihe River basin are obtained and the results are consistent with the actual situation. The results show the method is feasible and effective, and can be easily applied to effectively resolve problems of insufficient samples in regional flood risk assessment. The research can also provide decision-making for the risk assessment of flood disasters.