Effects of spatial planning on future flood risks in urban environments
Authored by Ahmed Mustafa, Martin Bruwier, Pierre Archambeau, Sebastian Erpicum, Michel Pirotton, Benjamin Dewals, Jacques Teller
Date Published: 2018
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.07.090
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Abstract
Urban development may increase the risk of future floods because of
local changes in hydrological conditions and an increase in flood
exposure that arises from an increasing population and expanding
infrastructure within flood-prone zones. Existing urban land use change
models generally consider the expansion process and do not consider the
densification of existing urban areas. In this paper, we simulate 24
possible urbanization scenarios in Wallonia region (Belgium) until 2100.
These scenarios are generated using an agent-based model that considers
urban expansion and densification as well as development restrictions in
flood-prone zones. The extents of inundation and water depths for each
scenario are determined by the WOLF 2D hydraulic model for steady floods
corresponding to return periods of 25, 50, and 100 years. Our results
show that future flood damages and their spatial distributions vary
remarkably from one urbanization scenario to another. A spatial planning
policy oriented towards strict development control in flood-prone zones
leads to a substantial mitigation of the increased flood damage. By
contrast, a spatial planning policy exclusively oriented to infill
development with no development restrictions in flood-prone zones would
be the most detrimental in terms of exposure to flood risk. Our study
enables the identification of the most sensitive locations for flood
damage related to urban development, which can help in the design of
more resilient spatial planning strategies and localize zones with high
levels of flood risk for each scenario.
Tags
Agent-based model
China
Settlement
Model
scale
growth
urban expansion
Climate-change
Cellular-automata
Expansion
Damage
Logistic-regression
Urban flooding
Flood damage
Urban densification
Wallonia