Abstract
Abstract. Coastal cities combine intensive socioeconomic activities and investments with high exposure to flood hazards. Developing effective strategies to manage flood risk in coastal cities is often a costly and complicated process. In designing strategies, engineers rely on computationally demanding flood simulation models, but they can only compare a limited number of strategies due to computational constraints. This limits the efficacy of standard flood simulation models in the crucial conceptual phase of flood risk management. This paper presents the Flood Risk Reduction Evaluation and Screening (FLORES) model, which provides useful risk information in this early conceptual phase. FLORES rapidly performs numerous simulations and compares the impact of many storms, strategies, and future scenarios. This article presents FLORES and demonstrates its merits in a case study for Beira, Mozambique. Our results demonstrate that expansion of the drainage capacity and strengthening of its coastal protection in the southwest are crucial components of any effective flood risk management strategy for Beira.
Highlights
1.1 BackgroundCoastal cities are under increasing pressure of flood events
This paper presents the Flood Risk Reduction Evaluation and Screening (FLORES) model as a generic model for investigating compound flood risk and shows its application through a case study of Beira, Mozambique
The project area is schematized such that a single flood simulation only takes a few seconds, and calculating a complete risk profile can be done in a few minutes
Summary
Floods are the most recurring and damaging type of natural hazard, posing major threats to socioeconomic development and safety of inhabitants (Fraser et al, 2016) Both socioeconomic activity and extreme weather events are increasing rapidly, and even though cities in many cases are becoming less vulnerable due to effective flood risk management, flood risk is growing in many flood-prone regions around the world (Doocy et al, 2013; Mechler and Bouwer, 2015; Salman and Li, 2018). Individual meteorological events, like hurricanes, can simultaneously cause extreme rainfall and high storm surges These compound events further increase both the vulnerability and the complexity of flood risk management in coastal cities. Extreme rainfall inundated the lower parts of the city, mostly occupied by informal settlements
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