Optimal prioritisation of watershed management measures for flood risk mitigation on a watershed scale

Watershed management includes methods to create, enhance, and maintain vegetation to reduce run-off and provide flood control in the watershed. The assignment of priority for watershed management measures requires the use of mathematical techniques to attain the most suitable strategies. In the present study, a framework was presented for assigning the optimal combinations of watershed management measures based on simulation-based optimisation approach. For this purpose, a one-dimensional hydrodynamic model was used to calculate the potential damages of different flood scenarios under various combinations of watershed management measures and was coupled with the NSGA-II multi-objective optimisation model to provide the optimal Pareto solutions between two conflicting objectives of minimising the investment costs of flood mitigation measures and the expected flood damages of the watershed. The proposed model was then applied to a small watershed in the centre of Iran as a case study, and the optimal trade-off solutions were calculated for flood risk mitigation. Using these trade-offs, for each level of funding, decision makers can select the optimal combination of watershed management measures considering decision criteria.

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