Terrain hazard risk analysis for flood disaster management in chaohu basin, China, based on two-dimensional cloud

Terrain analysis is essential to flood disaster risk evaluation. It is a complicated evaluation process, involving both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. However, quantitative and qualitative data cannot be put into operation directly. Based on stochastic and fuzzy mathematics, cloud models allow interchange between qualitative and quantitative data, dealing with randomness and ambiguity. Two- or multi-dimensional cloud models can solve the problem of multivariable analysis. This study used absolute elevation and neighborhood elevation standard deviation as main factors. Using the model, it demonstrated the construction of qualitative conditions and risk evaluation clouds and established a set of two-dimensional cloud reasoning rules to calculate the joint certainties with all the grids in reasoning rules. By selecting the highest certainty of cloud reasoning, preliminary evaluation results were obtained. For more accurate results, the model algorithm was improved, and further iterations were performed. The results of two-dimensional cloud reasoning showed better dispersion and precision than traditional methods did. The terrain risk distribution of Chaohu Basin, China, agreed with reality with great detail. A new method regarding the risk assessment of flood disaster was also proposed.