ESTIMATION OF THE POTENTIAL VULNERABILITY TO FLOODS BY “SUITABILITY MODELING” METHOD. CASE OF BATNA CITY, NORTHEAST OF ALGERIA

Abstract

The city of Batna, one of the Algerian cities, is the most exposed to flood risks, which are highly active and constitute a threat to the residents and the infrastructure. To better understand the vulnerability of this phenomenon, an approach of cartography inspired by the method of “suitability modeling” is used. This method allows us to determine the potential vulnerability levels of the study zone; therefore, we need to consider several criteria: socioeconomic factors like density of population, land use, and also physical criteria such as permeability, flow direction, and the like. Each of these various criteria was built on a database, which constituting an important element for building a model that helps us determine the vulnerable zones by using various GIS applications. The applied approach that depends on how the criteria are suitable give us 4 different levels of vulnerability in Batna, which are as follows: high vulnerability, 13% of the city’s total surface, average vulnerability 5%, low vulnerability 0.7%, and null vulnerability 82%.

Keywords

• Batna
• Floods
• vulnerability
• suitability
• model
• SIG