Efficacy Analysis of Urban Planning Scenarios for Flood Mitigation with Low Impact Development Technologies Using SWMM: A Case Study in Saitama City, Japan

Abstract

LID (Low impact Development) has been widely promoted as a measure against urban flooding which has been recently increasing due to urbanization and climate change. However, studies that consider the combined effects of spatially distributing multiple LIDs simultaneously in an urban area of specific size as urban planning scenarios are few. In this study, two cases of past rainfall data (short duration and long duration heavy rainfall), are used to simulate the effects of 3 different urban planning scenarios of distributed LID (i.e. combined LIDs implementable at the 1) building-level, 2) in open spaces, and 3) combined implementation of both 1&2), in addition to simulating for separate implementation of each LID type using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). The results show that in the case of short duration heavy rainfall, all 3 LID scenarios provide a greater decrease in the rate of flood volume with comparison to the case of long duration heavy rainfall. This points to the fact that LIDs have a high potential to mitigate flood volumes resulting from short duration heavy rainfall - the type of rainfall which has become more frequent recently. Furthermore, the paper also organizes the LID types according to their implementability under different urban planning scenarios, and shows that such combined use of LIDs results in higher flood mitigation efficacy.