Priority assessment and zoning of natural and agricultural hazards in Guilan Province

This study has aimed to analyze and evaluate the natural and agricultural hazards of Guilan Province. Guilan Province, due to the presence of multiple life zones and the existence of permanent rivers, suitable lands and important wetlands, can produce a variety of crops and livestock productions, which gives this province a prominent statues and natural and agricultural hazards could result in loss of these privileges. The purpose of this study is to identify, assess and prioritize risks of natural disasters and activities of the agricultural sector in the Guilan Province. The required data and information, has been adopted with regard to the review of the library studies and professional meetings in two major sections of agriculture and natural hazards. The agricultural and the natural sectors each respectively have four and five sub-criteria. After indexing each sub-criterion, Entropy model was used to evaluate the sub-criteria, and TOPSIS model was used for prioritization. All maps were produced in GIS format and then converted to Raster data. Zoning of all data formed the risk zones at the provincial level based on five classes of very low, low, high, very high and critical. The final results showed that approximately 15.70% of Guilan Province is in critical level in terms of natural and agricultural hazards, while 14.57% had high level of risks, 26.49% had an average level of risks, and 22.64% had a very low level of risks. This paper showed an innovative and reliable method to integrate the decision-making procedures of the risks and for identification of the most important criteria using an integrated multi criteria method. The weights of the criteria are determined by Entropy-TOPSIS method. The results indicated that the amount of fertilizer used in agricultural sectors is the critical criteria to make a hazard risk. Next in rank are the earthquakes risk, production in agricultural section, flood and production in the garden sector. The results of percentage of risk in different classes at the province level emphasises the need for integrated planning in these two sectors.