Volume 3 · Issue 9 (2026)
DOI number:
10.66521/2938-9933-2026092301
Optimization of Flood Emergency Evacuation Strategies Based on GIS and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
Shujing Gao, Bei Xue*, Zhen Yang
Engineering University of PAP, Xi'an 710086, Shaanxi, China
Corresponding Author: Bei Xue (149297683@qq.com)
Abstract: The efficiency and safety of emergency evacuation directly concern people's lives under extreme floods. Taking the upper Ying River Basin as the study area, evacuation zoning was carried out based on graded flood susceptibility, and a workflow of “candidate area screening – spatial optimization – safety constraints” was constructed to extract candidate shelter areas. A multi-criteria evaluation system comprising safety, distance, accessibility and capacity was weighted by AHP (safety 0.41, accessibility 0.27, distance 0.18, capacity 0.14; CR = 0.022) for quantitative shelter optimization, and three path models were comparatively analysed. The optimized shelters are characterized by “low-risk orientation, clustering along roads and multi-point distribution”; the shortest path is efficient but crosses medium-to-high risk zones in places; the raster cost path avoids risks but lacks origin–destination matching; while the risk-weighted road network model avoids high-risk zones while guaranteeing accessibility, achieving a dynamic balance between risk and efficiency. The findings provide methodological support for flood emergency evacuation planning.
Keywords: Emergency evacuation; Shelter site selection; Multi-criteria decision analysis; Route optimization; GIS
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