Flooding in any circumstance causes major stresses on the economic, social andrnenvironmental regimes of the affected area. The flooding of 5/6 August 2006, however,rndemonstrated that structural measures undertaken so far are not adequate to withstandrnflood threats resulting in over 300 fatalities and significant damage to the flood defenses,rnpublic infrastructure, housing and livelihoods in Dire Dawa town.rnThis paper studied flood risk analysis of Dire Dawa town and flash flood hazard mappingrnof Dechatu catchment. To do this an original GIS-based approach was used to buildrngeodatabase for the selected flood hazard layers and elements at risk (land use andrnpopulation density).Then the important factors were developed to a uniform raster layersrnwith 28.5 m pixel and were masked by the town area in the catchment. Each factor wasrnstandardized and then a pair wise comparison method was used to determine the factorrnweights. Then weighted overlay analysis in multi criteria evaluation (MCE) was used torncarry out flood hazard and risk analysis.rnDEM and mean annual daily maximum rainfall data were used to make flash floodrnhazard mapping using hydro extension version 1.1 in Arc View 3.2 for Dechaturncatchment. Sink filled DEM was used to compute flow direction, flow accumulation,rnwatershed, mean slope, shape factor, and mean precipitation from raster layer generatedrnfrom mean annual daily maximum rainfall. All these parameters were entered into streamrnattribute table for characterization. Eight Pour points were computed from the delineatedrnwatershed of Dechatu catchment. Accordingly, Lege Dole, Lege Dechatu, Lege Gogetirnand Lege Ala were the flash flood hazard wadis in the catchment.rnThe major findings of the paper showed that most of the land use types in the town arernwithin low to moderate flood hazard and flood risk level. With these Dire Dawa townrnflood risk map and flash flood hazard map, Development of future land use inrndevelopment policy should be done to decrease the hazard of flooding in Dire Dawarntown.rnKey words: - Flood, Risk, Hazard, GIS, MCE, Dire Dawa, Dechatu