Sustainable drainage systems for managing flooding risk in urban environments

What is it about?

Due to the influence of climate change and accelerated urbanization, extreme rainfall events have been intensifying the problem of urban flooding worldwide. In the set of global flooding events from 1975 to 2001, for each serious flooding event approximately 12 deaths are associated with urban drainage problems, which is due to the lack of infrastructural capacity or even the lack of infrastructure. We have shown that implementation of a drainage network together with compensatory structures provides a reduction of approximately 32% in the susceptibility to occurence of urban flooding. We have applied a stated-of-the-art method compused by integration of the analytical hierarchy process and consistency analysis for overlapping and assessment of the influential parameters.

Featured Image

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findingsnt contributes to the advancement of sustainable urban drainage systems, focusing on the capacity to improve the resilience of green and grey infrastructure options in the face of potential disturbances of system induced by urbanization and climate change. Two significant findings are that: a) the mapping of flooding susceptibility is extremely important for decision making in urban planning and management and b) the new approach presented has the potential to be used by developing countries, focusing on stormwater drainage planning and management, and by developed countries, focusing on flooding prevention by adapting the drainage system so as to approach a holistic view involving the quantity and quality of the water, biodiversity, and amenity.