**4. Conclusions**

Flood susceptibility mapping is an effective technique that allows for reducing flood hazard dangers in order to assist decision-makers to have proper managemen<sup>t</sup> over the prone areas, and thereafter ensure appropriate and sustainable socio-economic development. In this paper, to produce the flood susceptibility map of the Ottawa district in southern Ontario, Canada, a MCDM hierarchical approach has been proposed based on the AHP method and GIS with the capability to check the consistency of the obtained model. Eight flood influencing criteria were considered for mapping the flood-susceptible areas, i.e., precipitation, soil, distance from the river, drainage density, elevation, land use/land cover, geology, and slope data. The Importance Weights (IWs) of criteria were evaluated using a hierarchical model based on Geographic Information System (GIS). This approach was employed to establish the IW of each criterion. The evaluation results of the IWs of the precipitation, slope, and soil criteria play a prominent role in investigating flood-prone areas. Moreover, the geology and elevation criteria are far less important than other criteria and have less impact on flood susceptibility mapping. Further, the flood-susceptibility map is classified into five major classes with flood potentiality from very low to very high. We find 3.18% (very low), 40.93% (low), 24.37% (moderate), 15.27% (high), and 16.24% (very high). After that, *FHI* was calculated to evaluate the impact of each criterion on the method, which leads to a better understanding of each criterion on the flood susceptibility map. Finally, the flood susceptibility map presented in this paper will serve as a valuable tool and will play a vital role in assessing flood managemen<sup>t</sup> not only in the Ottawa region but also in other regions prone to flood events within the country.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization: A.N. and H.B.; methodology: A.N. and H.B.; software: A.N.; validation, A.N.; formal analysis, H.B. and A.N.; data curation, A.N.; writing—original draft preparation, A.N. and H.B.; writing—review and editing, H.B.; visualization, A.N. and H.B.; supervision: H.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Data available on request due to restrictions e.g., privacy or ethical.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
