Votre recherche

<p>This study investigates the performance of 35 recent ponds (which are under tendering, under construction, and finished in Erbil City), focusing on their role in flood mitigation across 11 distinct catchment areas. The total storage capacity of these ponds is approximately 9,926,394 m³, significantly enhancing the city's ability to manage stormwater runoff and reduce flood risks. The Watershed Modeling System (WMS), along with the Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) method, was utilized for hydrological modeling to evaluate runoff behavior and water retention performance. Calculated Retention Capacity Ratio (RCR) values vary from as low as 21 % in the smallest system to 136 % in the Kasnazan catchment, with Chamarga similarly exceeding full capacity at 131 %. These over-capacity networks not only attenuate peak flows but also promote groundwater recharge, improve downstream water quality by trapping sediments and nutrients, and create valuable aquatic and riparian habitats. Our findings demonstrate the multifaceted benefits of high-capacity retention ponds and provide a replicable model for integrating green infrastructure into urban planning to build flood resilience and sustainable water management in rapidly urbanizing regions.</p>

ABSTRACT The increasing frequency of natural disasters, such as floods, droughts, and tsunamis, has made vulnerable communities less resilient, pushing them toward long‐term poverty and food insecurity. Effective post‐disaster rehabilitation is critical to restoring livelihoods, infrastructure, and food security. However, challenges such as corruption, misallocation, and mistargeting undermine post‐disaster aid programs. This study systematically reviews 86 peer‐reviewed articles (1990–2023) using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta‐analyses (PRISMA) protocol to investigate aid inefficiencies in disaster recovery. The findings reveal that aid often fails to reach the most affected communities, being diverted to unaffected areas due to political influence and local elites, exacerbating inequalities. Corruption further hampers institutional performance and long‐term disaster resilience efforts. The study calls for transparent, accountable, and inclusive strategies for aid distribution, aligning with SDG 10 (reduced inequalities) and SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities). Future research should focus on gender‐sensitive strategies, local governance, and technological innovations to enhance aid transparency and effectiveness.

Introduction Impacts of climate change on human health receive increasing attention. However, the connections of climate change with well-being and mental health are still poorly understood. Objective As part of the Horizon Europe project TRIGGER, we aim to deepen the understanding of the relationships between climate change and human mental health and well-being in Europe by focusing on environmental and socio-individual determinants. Methods This study is a systematic literature review based on the PRISMA guidelines using Embase, Medline and Web of Science. Results 143 records were retrieved. The results show that climate change and its specific hazards (air pollution, floods, wildfires, meteorological variables, and temperature extremes) impact human well-being and mental health. Discussion Mental health and well-being outcomes are complex, extremely individual, and can be long lasting. Determinants like the living surrounding, human’s life activities as well as socio-individual determinants alter the linkage between climate change and mental health. The same determinant can exert both a pathogenic and a salutogenic effect, depending on the outcome. Knowing the effects of the determinants is of high relevance to improve resilience. Several pathways were identified. For instance, higher level of education and female gender lead to perceiving climate change as a bigger threat but increase preparedness to climate hazards. Elderly, children and adolescents are at higher risks of mental health problems. On the other hand, social relation, cohesiveness and support from family and friends are generally protective. Green and blue spaces improve well-being and mental health. Overall, comparing the different hazard-outcome relationships is difficult due to varying definitions, measurement techniques, spatial and temporal range, scales, indicators and population samples. Systematic Review Registration https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/home , identifier CRD42023426758.

Abstract Market-based instruments, including competitive tenders, are central to funding global environmental restoration and management projects. Recently, tenders have been utilised to fund Nature-based Solutions schemes for Natural Flood Management, with the explicit purpose of achieving co-benefits; flood management and reducing inequities. While multiple studies consider the efficacy of Nature-based Solutions for tackling inequities, no prior research has quantified whether the resource allocation for these projects has been conducted equitably. We analyse two national natural flood management programmes funded through competitive tenders in England to explore who benefits by considering the characteristics of projects, including socio-economic, geographical (e.g. rurality) and flood risk dynamics. Our results suggest that inequity occurs at both the application and funding stages of Nature-based Solutions projects for flood risk management. This reflects wider international challenges of using market-based instruments for environmental resource allocation. Competitive tenders have the potential to undermine the equitable benefits of Nature-based Solutions.

This study aims to conduct a grid-scale extreme precipitation risk assessment in Xuanwu District, Nanjing, so as to fill the gaps in existing indicator systems and improve the precision of risk characterization. By integrating physical, social, and environmental indicators, a risk assessment framework was constructed to comprehensively represent the characteristics of extreme precipitation risk. This study applied the entropy weight method to calculate indicator weights, combined with ArcGIS technology and the K-means clustering algorithm, to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of risk under a 100-year extreme precipitation scenario and to identify key influencing indicators across different risk levels. The results showed that extreme precipitation risk levels in Xuanwu District exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity, with an overall distribution pattern of low risk in the central area and high risk in the surrounding areas. The influence mechanisms of key indicators showed tiered response characteristics: the low-risk areas were mainly controlled by the submerged areas of urban and rural, industrial and mining, and residential lands, water body area, soil erosion level, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The medium-risk areas were influenced by the submerged areas of urban and rural, industrial and mining, residential lands, the submerged areas of forest land, emergency service response time to disaster-affected areas, soil erosion level, and NDVI. The high-risk areas were jointly dominated by the submerged areas of urban and rural, industrial and mining, residential lands, the submerged areas of forest land, and NDVI. The extremely high-risk areas were driven by three factors—the submerged areas of forest land, emergency service response time to disaster-affected areas, and the proportion of the largest patch to the landscape area. This study improves the indicator system for extreme precipitation risk assessment and clarifies the tiered response patterns of risk-driving indicators, providing a scientific basis for developing differentiated flood control strategies in Xuanwu District while offering important theoretical support for improving regional flood disaster resilience. © 2025 Editorial Office of Journal of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Engineering. All rights reserved.

Rapid urban expansion has significantly altered land use patterns, resulting in a decrease in pervious surface areas and a disruption of hydrologic connectivity between surface water and groundwater systems. Combined with inadequate drainage systems and poorly managed runoff, these changes have intensified urban flooding, leading to fatalities and significant infrastructure damage in many rapidly growing and climate-vulnerable urban areas around the world. This study presents an integrated economic-hydrologic model to assess the effectiveness of Low Impact Development (LID) measures—specifically permeable pavement, infiltration trenches, bio-retention cells, and rain barrels—in mitigating flood damage in the Bronx river watershed, NYC. The Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was employed to simulate flood events and assess the effectiveness of various LIDs, applied individually and in combination, in reducing peak discharge. Flood inundation maps generated using HEC-GeoRAS were integrated with the HAZUS damage estimation model to quantify potential flood damages. A benefit-to-cost (BC) ratio was then calculated by comparing the monetary savings from reduced flood damage against the implementation costs of LID measures. Results indicate that the combined LID scenario offers the highest peak flow reduction, with permeable pavement alone reducing flow by 57%, outperforming other techniques under equal area coverage. Among all individual options, permeable pavement yields the highest cumulative BC ratio under all scenarios (4.6), whereas rain barrels are the least effective (2.6). The proposed evaluation framework highlights the importance of economic efficiency in flood mitigation planning and provides a structured foundation for informed decision-making to enhance urban resilience through LID implementation. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Study region: This study aims at the Kunhar River Basin, Pakistan, that has been facing repeated flood occurrences on a recurring basis. As the flood susceptibility of this area is high, its topographic complexity demands correct predictive modeling for strategic flood planning. Study focus: We developed a system of flood susceptibility mapping based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. Four kernel functions were applied, and the highest-performing was the Radial Basis Function (SVM-RBF). The model was validated and trained using historical flood inventories, morphometric parameters, and hydrologic variables, and feature dimensionality was reduced via PCA for increased efficiency. New hydrological insights: The SVM-RBF model recorded an AUC of 0.8341, 88.02% success, 84.97% predictability, 0.89 Kappa value, and F1-score of 0.86, all of which indicated high predictability. Error analysis yielded a PBIAS of +2.14%, indicating negligible overestimation bias but within limits acceptable in hydrological modeling. The results support the superiority of the SVM-RBF approach compared to conventional bivariate methods in modeling flood susceptibility over the complex terrain of mountains. The results can be applied in guiding evidence-based flood mitigation, land-use planning, and adaptive management in the Kunhar River Basin. © 2025 The Author(s)

Urban flooding, intensified by climate change and rapid urbanization, demands robust and operationally effective resilience strategies. However, empirical evidence on the comparative effectiveness of such strategies remains limited. This study presents the first meta-analytic synthesis evaluating urban flood resilience interventions across institutional, infrastructural, and socio-ecological domains. By synthesizing data from 29 peer-reviewed studies (2000–2024), this study applies standardized effect sizes (Cohen's d) and meta-regression models to assess the effectiveness of different strategies. Results reveal a substantial overall effect (pooled d = 2.96, 95 % CI: [1.92, 3.99]) with high heterogeneity (I2 = 93.8 %). Institutional mechanisms, such as policy coordination, regulatory frameworks, and risk governance, consistently show the strongest and most statistically significant impacts (d ≈ 2.96). Low Impact Development (LID) demonstrates limited, non-significant effects (d ≈ 0.08). The study introduces a novel hierarchical resilience framework spanning different dimensions and establishes an evidence-based typology of urban flood resilience strategies. These findings highlight the importance of integrated, multi-level governance and context-specific planning in enhancing urban flood resilience. The study findings provides critical insights for implementing resilience strategies in flood-prone urban areas, and support the formulation of adaptive and sustainable urban policies. © 2025

Intertidal soft sediments are on the frontline of climate change effects, subject to increasing atmospheric heatwave intensity alongside rising sea levels. Longer inundation periods can keep sediments more saturated with water, potentially providing a thermal buffer against atmospheric heatwaves and creating refugia for resident communities and the ecosystem functions they produce. To assess this effect, we set up a field experiment to simulate a heat stress event along a gradient of inundation time on an intertidal flat using open top heat chambers. We examined how heat stress and inundation interact to influence sediment temperature, and how this in turn affects CO₂ flux, a proxy for ecosystem metabolism, and its relationship to key ecological covariates. We found that in ambient conditions, maximum sediment temperature decreased with increasing inundation. However, under heat stress, this relationship reversed, with maximum sediment temperature increasing with inundation, suggesting that more saturated sediments conduct heat more efficiently and promote higher temperatures under prolonged heat stress. Despite this temperature anomaly, the effect of heat stress on ecosystem metabolism remained consistent across the inundation gradient, indicating that increasing inundation time does not provide refugia from heat stress, nor does the elevated temperature anomaly amplify metabolic responses. Resilience mechanisms such as functional redundancy and compensatory interactions in sediment communities may have buffered against temperature variability, therefore maintaining function under heat stress. Our findings highlight the complex interactions between heat stress and inundation and suggest that sea level rise will not provide straightforward thermal refugia for soft sediment ecosystem function. © 2025 The Authors

Urban flooding threatens Indian cities and is made worse by rapid urbanization, climate change and poor infrastructure. Severe flooding occurred in cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Ahmedabad. This has caused huge economic losses and displacement. This study addresses the limitations of traditional flood forecasting methods. It has to contend with the complex dynamics of urban flooding. We offer a deep learning approach which uses the network Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to improve flood risk prediction. Our CNN-LSTM model combines spatial data (water table, topography) and temporal data (historical model) to classify flood risk as low or high. This method includes collecting data pre-processing (MinMaxScaler, LabelEncoder) Modeling, Training and Evaluation. The results demonstrate the accuracy of flood risk predictions and provide insights into flexible strategies for urban flood management. This research highlights the role of data-driven approaches in improving urban planning to reduce flood risk in high-risk areas. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.

Flood risk assessment is an effective tool for disaster prevention and mitigation. As land use is a key factor influencing flood disasters, studying the impact of different land use patterns on flood risk is crucial. This study evaluates flood risk in the Chang-Zhu-Tan (CZT) urban agglomeration by selecting 17 socioeconomic and natural environmental factors within a risk assessment framework encompassing hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience. Additionally, the Patch-Generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS) and multilayer perceptron (MLP)/Bayesian network (BN) models were coupled to predict flood risks under three future land use scenarios: natural development, urban construction, and ecological protection. This integrated modeling framework combines MLP’s high-precision nonlinear fitting with BN’s probabilistic inference, effectively mitigating prediction uncertainty in traditional single-model approaches while preserving predictive accuracy and enhancing causal interpretability. The results indicate that high-risk flood zones are predominantly concentrated along the Xiang River, while medium-high- and medium-risk areas are mainly distributed on the periphery of high-risk zones, exhibiting a gradient decline. Low-risk areas are scattered in mountainous regions far from socioeconomic activities. Simulating future land use using the PLUS model with a Kappa coefficient of 0.78 and an overall accuracy of 0.87. Under all future scenarios, cropland decreases while construction land increases. Forestland decreases in all scenarios except for ecological protection, where it expands. In future risk predictions, the MLP model achieved a high accuracy of 97.83%, while the BN model reached 87.14%. Both models consistently indicated that the flood risk was minimized under the ecological protection scenario and maximized under the urban construction scenario. Therefore, adopting ecological protection measures can effectively mitigate flood risks, offering valuable guidance for future disaster prevention and mitigation strategies. © 2025 by the authors.

This study presents a novel bivariate-output deep learning framework based on LeNet-5 for the simultaneous prediction of urban flood susceptibility and inundation depth in Seoul, South Korea. Unlike previous studies that relied on single-output models, the proposed approach jointly learns classification and regression targets through a shared feature extraction structure, enhancing consistency and generalization. Among six tested architectures, the Le5SD_CBAM model—integrating a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM)—achieved the best performance, with 83% accuracy, an Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) of 0.91 for flood susceptibility classification, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.12 m and root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.18 m for depth estimation. The model’s spatial predictions aligned well with hydrological principles and past flood records, accurately identifying low-lying flood-prone zones and capturing localized inundation patterns influenced by infrastructure and micro-topography. Importantly, it detected spatial mismatches between susceptibility and depth, demonstrating the benefit of joint modeling. Variable importance analysis highlighted elevation as the dominant predictor, while distances to roads, rivers, and drainage systems were also key contributors. In contrast, secondary terrain attributes had limited influence, indicating that urban infrastructure has significantly altered natural flood flow dynamics. Although the model lacks dynamic forcings such as rainfall and upstream inflows, it remains a valuable tool for flood risk mapping in data-scarce settings. The bivariate-output framework improves computational efficiency and internal coherence compared to separate single-task models, supporting its integration into urban flood management and planning systems. © 2025 by the authors.

Assessing flood severity in urban areas is a pivotal task for urban resilience and climate adaptation. However, the lack of in situ measurements hinders direct spatial estimation of flood return periods, while conventional assumptions about rainstorm-flood consistency introduce significant uncertainties due to rainstorm spatiotemporal variability (STV). This study proposes a novel framework that utilizes multivariate frequency analysis of flood variables at the street level (50 m) through a stochastic rainstorm-flood event catalog. The rainstorm events in the catalog are generated by a random field generator and resampled to match the joint distribution of STV variables consistent with radar observations. Urban flood processes are then simulated by a hydrodynamic model for flood hazard assessment (FHA). We applied the framework to a rural-urban watershed using 3,000 cases randomly resampled from the catalog. Results reveal that inundation characteristics respond more rapidly to increasing rainfall intensities than downstream flood peaks, particularly during the early stages of rainstorms. The complex joint probability structures of rainstorm severity and STV variables obscure the mechanistic control of individual factors on flood response. A significant underestimation of street-level flood hazards occurs when assuming the same return periods (RPs) as those for watershed-level hazards. The inconsistency between rainstorm and flood severities results in widespread underestimation of street-level flood hazards in upstream regions, while traditional storm designs that neglect STV lead to overestimations in mid- and downstream areas. This study highlights the complex probabilistic behavior of spatially distributed flood hazards across multiple scales, enhancing the insights and methodologies for street-level FHA. © 2025 The Author(s).

This study uses remote sensing data to assess susceptibility to hazards, which are then validated to model impact scenarios for land subsidence and coastal flooding in the Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) of Selangor, Malaysia, to support decision-making in urban planning and land management. Land subsidence and coastal floods affect a major proportion of the population in the ICZM, with subsidence being significant contributing factors, but information on the extent of susceptible areas, monitoring, and wide-area coverage is limited. Land subsidence distribution is demarcated using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time-series data (2015–2022), and integrated with coastal flood susceptibility derived from Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based weights to model impacts on land cover. Results indicate maximum subsidence rates of 46 mm/year (descending orbit) and 61 mm/year (ascending orbit); reflecting a gradual increase in subsidence trends with an average rate of 13 mm/year. In the worst-case scenario, within the ICZM area of 2262 km2, nearly 12% of the total built-up land cover with the highest population density is exposed to land subsidence, while exposure to coastal floods is relatively larger, covering nearly 34% of the built-up area. Almost 27% of the built-up area is exposed to the combined effects of both land subsidence and coastal floods, under present sea level conditions, with increasing risks of coastal floods over 2040, 2050 and 2100, due to both combinations. This research prioritizes areas for further study and provides a scientific foundation for resilience strategies aimed at ensuring sustainable coastal development within the ICZM. © 2025 by the authors.

Floods pose a substantial risk to human well-being. These risks encompass economic losses, infrastructural damage, disruption of daily life, and potential loss of life. This study presents a state-wide and county-level spatial exposure assessment of the Iowa railway network, emphasizing the resilience and reliability of essential services during such disasters. In the United States, the railway network is vital for the distribution of goods and services. This research specifically targets the railway network in Iowa, a state where the impact of flooding on railways has not been extensively studied. We employ comprehensive GIS analysis to assess the vulnerability of the railway network, bridges, rail crossings, and facilities under 100- and 500-year flood scenarios at the state level. Additionally, we conducted a detailed investigation into the most flood-affected counties, focusing on the susceptibility of railway bridges. Our state-wide analysis reveals that, in a 100-year flood scenario, up to 9% of railroads, 8% of rail crossings, 58% of bridges, and 6% of facilities are impacted. In a 500-year flood scenario, these figures increase to 16%, 14%, 61%, and 13%, respectively. Furthermore, our secondary analysis using flood depth maps indicates that approximately half of the railway bridges in the flood zones of the studied counties could become non-functional in both flood scenarios. These findings are crucial for developing effective disaster risk management plans and strategies, ensuring adequate preparedness for the impacts of flooding on railway infrastructure. © 2025 by the authors.

Rapid urbanization and climate change have intensified urban flood risks, necessitating resilient upstream infrastructure to ensure metropolitan water security and effective flood mitigation. Gravity dams, as critical components of urban flood protection systems, regulate discharge to downstream urban areas. Gravity dams are critical for regulating flood discharge, yet their seismic vulnerability poses significant challenges, particularly under compound effects involving concurrent seismic loading and climate-induced elevated reservoir levels. This study introduces a novel seismic analysis framework for gravity dams using the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM), which efficiently models dam–water and dam–foundation interactions in infinite domains. A two-dimensional numerical model of a concrete gravity dam, subjected to realistic seismic loading, was developed and validated against analytical solutions and conventional finite element method (FEM) results, achieving discrepancies as low as 0.95% for static displacements and 0.21% for natural frequencies. The SBFEM approach accurately captures hydrodynamic pressures and radiation damping, revealing peak pressures at the dam heel during resonance and demonstrating computational efficiency with significantly reduced nodal requirements compared to FEM. These findings enhance understanding of dam behavior under extreme loading. The proposed framework supports climate-adaptive design standards and integrated hydrological–structural modeling. By addressing the seismic safety of flood-control dams, this research contributes to the development of resilient urban water management systems capable of protecting metropolitan areas from compound climatic and seismic extremes. © 2025 by the authors.