Abstract
Urban pluvial flooding in China has become one of the major challenges for sustainable development. This paper analyzes the impact of climate change, urbanization, and integrated disaster drivers on urban pluvial flooding hazards, starting from the disaster-causing mechanisms of urban pluvial flooding in China. This paper then analyzes the main features and progress of urban pluvial flooding governance in China. In particular, this paper describes the progress of sponge cities in China. On the basis of the above contents, this paper describes three manifestations of the fragmentation dilemma at the level of governance, namely, fragmentation in value integration due to conflicting management orders and service values, fragmentation in resource and power allocation due to the lack of vertical top-level design and blurred horizontal departmental management boundaries, and fragmentation in policy formulation and implementation due to outdated urban flood control standards and interdepartmental information compartmentalization. In response to the fragmentation dilemma in urban pluvial flooding management in China, this paper introduces the concept of holistic governance and clarifies the path of urban waterlogging management, i.e., forming a collaborative and diversified governance subjects, deeply optimizing the organizational structure of urban waterlogging management, creating a mature information-based governance platform, and improving the legal and rule of law construction model. This paper is informative for understanding the governance of urban pluvial flooding in China from a government-led management level.
Highlights
China is significantly influenced by monsoon, and urban pluvial flooding is concentrated from May to September [7,10]
In 2020, severe pluvial flooding caused by rainstorm that lasted for many days in southern China, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People’s Republic of China website, as of 10 July 2020, pluvial flooding caused 33.85 million people affected in 27 provinces, 141 people died, and the direct economic loss was RMB 69.59 billion [13,16]
By studying the hierarchy and division of power functions in the Chinese bureaucracy, Lieberthal et al introduced the concept of “Fragmented Authoritarianism”. Incorporating this concept, this paper presents a fragmented characterization of the existing urban pluvial flooding governance in China from three dimensions [56]
Summary
Under the joint influence of global climate change and rapid urbanization, the water cycle process and elements have undergone drastic changes, extreme weather events have increased and enhanced [1,2,3], urban heat island effect and urban rain island effect have emerged [1,2], urban surface runoff and confluence mechanisms have changed, which makes the urban pluvial flooding disasters increasingly serious [4,5,6]. The urban heat island effect may have some influence on the hydrological cycle and affect the rainstorm characteristics of urban areas, especially the frequency and intensity of extreme rainstorms in urban areas may increase, causing the urban rain island effect [1,3] This is mainly because the rapid development of urbanization has forced the thermal properties of the city’s subsurface to change, resulting in the thermal airflow slowly gathering over the city and accumulating thicker thermal airflow, coupled with the increase in condensation nodules and dust over the city, resulting in significantly higher temperatures in the city than in the suburbs and forming the heat island effect [3]. Stormwater source control is the use of stormwater sources such as green areas, grasses and trees, buildings, etc. to absorb and abate rainwater runoff in a decentralized manner, with typical techniques such as greening on top of houses, infiltration-type green space construction, rainwater absorption gardens, permeable road construction, and permeable ditch [23,53,54,55]
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