Urban Flood Resilience in India: A Comprehensive Review of Challenges, Assessment Strategies, and Future Directions

Urban flooding has become an urgent environmental issue in rapidly developing cities like Cebu City, Philippines, where accelerated urbanization has led to increased impervious surfaces and limited natural water absorption. Traditional flood management approaches, such as concrete drainage systems, are proving insufficient amid the growing impacts of climate change. This study investigates the effectiveness of green infrastructure (GI) in urban flood control, with a focus on Barangay Lorega. GI includes sustainable, nature-based solutions such as permeable pavements, green roofs, rain gardens, and constructed wetlands that offer both ecological and social benefits. Employing a descriptive-quantitative research design, the study combined survey data and stakeholder interviews to evaluate GI’s flood mitigation capacity, cost-effectiveness, and social relevance. Statistical results revealed no significant differences in flood control effectiveness based on demographic factors such as sex, age, civil status, or education. However, regression analysis showed that community engagement and awareness significantly influenced perceived effectiveness, while GI implementation demonstrated a modest yet meaningful impact. These findings suggest that while GI alone may not drastically transform urban flood resilience, it plays a valuable role when combined with public participation and informed governance. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on urban resilience and sustainable flood management, particularly in tropical, high-density settings. It offers insights for local policymakers, urban planners, and community stakeholders seeking to integrate green infrastructure into comprehensive climate-adaptive urban planning.

Urban flooding has become an urgent environmental issue in rapidly developing cities like Cebu City, Philippines, where accelerated urbanization has led to increased impervious surfaces and limited natural water absorption. Traditional flood management approaches, such as concrete drainage systems, are proving insufficient amid the growing impacts of climate change. This study investigates the effectiveness of green infrastructure (GI) in urban flood control, with a focus on Barangay Lorega. GI includes sustainable, nature-based solutions such as permeable pavements, green roofs, rain gardens, and constructed wetlands that offer both ecological and social benefits. Employing a descriptive-quantitative research design, the study combined survey data and stakeholder interviews to evaluate GI’s flood mitigation capacity, cost-effectiveness, and social relevance. Statistical results revealed no significant differences in flood control effectiveness based on demographic factors such as sex, age, civil status, or education. However, regression analysis showed that community engagement and awareness significantly influenced perceived effectiveness, while GI implementation demonstrated a modest yet meaningful impact. These findings suggest that while GI alone may not drastically transform urban flood resilience, it plays a valuable role when combined with public participation and informed governance. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on urban resilience and sustainable flood management, particularly in tropical, high-density settings. It offers insights for local policymakers, urban planners, and community stakeholders seeking to integrate green infrastructure into comprehensive climate-adaptive urban planning.

Urban flooding has become a global issue due to climate change, urbanization and limitation in the capacity of urban drainage infrastructures. To tackle the growing threats, it is crucial to understand urban surface flood resilience, i.e., how urban drainage catchments can resist against and recover from flooding. This study proposes a grid cell based resilience metric to assess urban surface flood resilience at the urban drainage catchment scale. The new metric is defined as the ratio of the number of unflooded grid cells to the total grid cell number in an urban drainage catchment. A two-dimensional Cellular Automata based model CADDIES is used to simulate urban surface flooding. This methodology is demonstrated using a case study in Dalian, China, which is divided into 31 urban drainage catchments for flood resilience analysis. Results show the high resolution resilience assessment identifies vulnerable catchments and helps develop effective adaptation strategies to enhance urban surface flood resilience. Comparison of the new metric with an existing metric reveals that new metric has the advantage of fully reflecting the changing process of system performance. Effectiveness of adaptation strategies for enhancing urban surface flood resilience is discussed for different catchments. This study provides a new way to characterize urban flood resilience and an in-depth understanding of flood resilience for urban drainage catchments of different characteristics, and thus help develop effective intervention strategies for sustainable sponge city development.

Exploring the network structure of coupled green-grey infrastructure to enhance urban pluvial flood resilience: A scenario-based approach focusing on ‘centralized’ and ‘decentralized’ structures

A System Dynamics Model of Urban Rainstorm and Flood Resilience to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

Rethinking urban storm water management through resilience – The case for using green infrastructure in our warming world

A framework for urban pluvial flood resilient spatial planning through blue-green infrastructure

Evaluation of urban flood resilience and its Space-Time Evolution: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China

Climate change and increasing urbanization have contributed greatly to urban flooding, making it a global problem. The resilient city approach provides new ideas for urban flood prevention research, and currently, enhancing urban flood resilience is an effective means for alleviating urban flooding pressure. This study proposes a method to quantify the resilience value of urban flooding based on the `4R' theory of resilience, by coupling the urban rainfall and flooding model to simulate urban flooding, and the simulation results are used for calculating index weights and assessing the spatial distribution of urban flood resilience in the study area. The results indicate that (1) the high level of flood resilience in the study area is positively correlated with the points prone to waterlogging; the more an area is prone to waterlogging, the lower the flood resilience value. (2) The flood resilience index in most areas shows a significant local spatial clustering effect, the number of areas with nonsignificant local spatial clustering accounting for 46% of the total. The urban flood resilience assessment system constructed in this study provides a reference for assessing the urban flood resilience of other cities, thus facilitating the decision-making process of urban planning and disaster mitigation.

Cities worldwide are grappling with increasingly complex challenges in managing urban flood risk stemming from rapid urbanization exacerbated by climate change impacts. Traditional gray infrastructure has limitations in effectively managing the growing frequency and severity of urban floods, particularly during extreme events. Nature‐based Solutions (NbS) that utilize natural processes and ecosystems to enhance urban flood resilience and provide multiple benefits to society and the economy have emerged as a promising alternative and supplement. However, the mainstream adoption of NbS is driven by various factors and faces numerous barriers, creating a complex landscape that demands thorough investigation. This research provides a systematic review of the existing literature on key barriers and drivers shaping the widespread adoption of NbS in urban flood resilience strategies. The literature reveals that while certain drivers can facilitate NbS adoption, there are also major knowledge, awareness, and technology; physical; governance and institutional; and social and cultural barriers, hindering their mainstream integration into the existing framework. This paper provides crucial insights for future urban planning and climate adaptation initiatives seeking to enhance flood resilience amid the challenges posed by climate change. Additionally, the study uncovers potential avenues for future research, emphasizing the development of strategies to overcome barriers and promoting the widespread implementation of NbS as a flood adaptation strategy. This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies Climate and Development > Urbanization, Development, and Climate Change Policy and Governance > Governing Climate Change in Communities, Cities, and Regions

Integrating prospect theory and hesitant fuzzy linguistic preferences for enhanced urban flood resilience assessment: A case study of the tuojiang river Basin in western China

Green infrastructure (GI) has been increasingly associated with urban flood resilience as it provides benefits in protecting communities from flood dangers and improving socio-economic capabilities. In order to optimize the GI advantages, it is necessary to engage in strategic prioritizing of implementation areas, considering local conditions. Despite a growing interest in connecting GI and flood resilience, there is still a lack of strategic-oriented GI planning models aimed at enhancing urban flood resilience. This study has introduced the Flood Resilience-based Urban Green Infrastructure Site Priority (FRUGISP) model, which employs a GIS-based multi-criteria assessment to determine the urban regions that should be prioritized for the implementation of GI systems, based on their flood resilience levels. The model was used to map the priority areas in Monterrey, Mexico, and Brussels, Belgium. Despite their distinct features, both cities face flood challenges. The results showed regions of utmost importance based on the flood resilience index and land availability for GI implementation. The model has the potential to be applied to other urban areas grappling with flood issues, providing guidance to decision-makers in selecting high-priority locations for GI projects. This approach can effectively address the difficulties posed by urban floods, ensuring the resilience of urban areas.

In recent decades, climate change is exacerbating meteorological disasters around the world, causing more serious urban flood disaster losses. Many solutions in related research have been proposed to enhance urban adaptation to climate change, including urban flooding simulations, risk reduction and urban flood-resistance capacity. In this paper we provide a thorough review of urban flood-resilience using scientometric and systematic analysis. Using Cite Space and VOS viewer, we conducted a scientometric analysis to quantitively analyze related papers from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1999 to 2021 with urban flood resilience as the keyword. We systematically summarize the relationship of urban flood resilience, including co-citation analysis of keywords, authors, research institutions, countries, and research trends. The scientometric results show that four stages can be distinguished to indicate the evolution of different keywords in urban flood management from 1999, and urban flood resilience has become a research hotspot with a significant increase globally since 2015. The research methods and progress of urban flood resilience in these four related fields are systematically analyzed, including climate change, urban planning, urban system adaptation and urban flood-simulation models. Climate change has been of high interest in urban flood-resilience research. Urban planning and the adaptation of urban systems differ in terms of human involvement and local policies, while more dynamic factors need to be jointly described. Models are mostly evaluated with indicators, and comprehensive resilience studies based on traditional models are needed for multi-level and higher performance models. Consequently, more studies about urban flood resilience based on local policies and dynamics within global urban areas combined with fine simulation are needed in the future, improving the concept of resilience as applied to urban flood-risk-management and assessment.

The influencing factors and mechanisms for urban flood resilience in China: From the perspective of social-economic-natural complex ecosystem

Enhancing water management and urban flood resilience using Hazard Capacity Factor Design (HCFD) model: Case study of Eco-Delta city, Busan