Abstract
Climate change and urbanization are increasing the intensity and frequency of floods in urban areas. Low Impact Development (LID) is a technique which attenuates runoff and manages urban flooding. However, the impact of climate change and urbanization on the demand or need for LID in cities for both current and future conditions is not known. The primary goal of this research was to evaluate the demand for LID under different climate change and urban growth scenarios based on a physical-based geospatial framework called the hydrological-hydraulic index (HHI). To do this, 12 scenarios considering four climate change and three urbanization conditions were developed. The HHI for three cities in Canada (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver) were estimated, evaluated, and compared for these scenarios. The results show that both urbanization and climate change increase the demand for LID. The contribution of climate change and urbanization on LID demand, measured using HHI, varies for each city: in Toronto and Montreal, high rainfall intensity and low permeability mean that climate change is dominant, whereas, in Vancouver, both climate change and urbanization have a similar impact on LID demand. Toronto and Montreal also have a higher overall demand for LID and the rate of increase in demand is higher over the study period. The results of this study provide us with a comprehensive understanding of the effect of climate and urbanization on the demand for LID, which can be used for flood management, urban planning, and sustainable development of cities.
Highlights
Floods are a major growing natural hazard that causes the loss of human lives and properties.The proportion of flood occurrence was the highest of all types of natural disasters from 1995 to 2015 [1].The frequency of flooding has increased during the last two decades (1995 to 2015) [2]
The results show that, with time, the hydrological-hydraulic index (HHI) values increase, i.e. the histograms shift to the right, which indicates higher runoff generation potential and, an increase in demand for Low Impact Development (LID) for source control
We showed that, if we retain the land cover as it is in these three cities, climate change will cause an increase in demand for LID since the runoff generation potential for each city will increase
Summary
Floods are a major growing natural hazard that causes the loss of human lives and properties.The proportion of flood occurrence was the highest of all types of natural disasters from 1995 to 2015 [1].The frequency of flooding has increased during the last two decades (1995 to 2015) [2]. The proportion of flood occurrence was the highest of all types of natural disasters from 1995 to 2015 [1]. Floods caused 157,000 fatalities globally (accounting for 26% of all weather-related disasters). It affected the quality of life of 2.3 billion people, which is the highest share (56%) among weather-related disasters [1]. In terms of economic losses, based on UNISDR (2016), between 2006 and 2016, the average annual costs associated with flooding were about 50 billion USD. This ranks first among all natural disasters. These damages include all types of regions (i.e., land uses) including urban areas [3]
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