Synthesis of Spatial Results to Recommend a Preferred Alternative

The integration of GIS and fuzzy MCDA(Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) allows the engineer to determine the preferred alternative for each spatial location in the study area. The next step is to recommend to the final decision makers a single flood management alternative for the entire region. Note that if the study area is large, it might be possible to use the kind of information to recommend different alternatives for different portions of the region. However, for this study it is assumed that only a single alternative will be used. In this study, a "cost of uniformity" metric is proposed that allows decision makers to compute the impact of selecting a single alternative for the entire floodplain. This metric represents the increase in the average distance metric value as compared to the spatially diverse solution from the MCDA and GIS analysis. The results could be applied to any region of the floodplain as desired. Whether the decision makers decide to apply these calculations to the entire floodplain or to specific important regions within the floodplain, an analysis of the increases in the cost of uniformity provides an integrated way for the decision maker to rank the alternatives. This should provide an improvement in their engineering analysis.