Urban Flood Susceptibility Study: An AHP-Based Geospatial Multi-Criteria Evaluation in Kigali City, with a Focus on the Mpazi Catchment

water floods are the most common and costly natural calamities that affect all countries globally. Flooding in Mpazi catchment (MC) in the city of Kigali (CoK) has raised an issue to sustainable city development. The major aim of this study was to assess flood hazard, vulnerability, and risk in the part of Mpazi catchment (MC) by utilizing GIS-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Mapping of flood hazard in Mpazi catchment was conducted by using twelve prominent parameters divided into two categories, one is flood hazard parameters (FHP) namely elevation, slope, drainage density, distance to the river, rainfall, soil and geology, while the others were flood vulnerability parameters (FVP) such as population density, land use and land cover, distance to road, global man-made impervious surface (GMIS), Human built-up area settlement extent (HBASE). Flood vulnerability parameters were used to generate a flood vulnerability map. Furthermore, flood susceptibility and flood vulnerability maps were generated and used to develop a flood risk map. The study on Mpazi catchment classified risk zones into very low, low, moderate, high, and very high flood risk zones. Southern areas with low elevation, slope, drainage density, and dense human-built structures were more vulnerable to flooding. The model's results aligned with historical flooding records. Keywords: Mpazi catchment, flood susceptibility, Geo-spatial multi-criteria evaluation, AHP, City of Kigali