Urban hydrography and Bluespots map of Craiova (Romania)

Abstract

The global climate change imposes new strategies of prevention and protection against the effects of urban flooding. The main goal of this paper is the identification of areas exposed to flooding risk in the Craiova city, and the study was structured in two sections. In the first part we aimed to identify the changes of the hydrography in the Craiova city from the beginning of its urban expansion and the hydrotechnical works realized for flooding protection from the 19 th century until now. The reconstruction of the hydrography was based on the cartographic documents elaborated since the second half of the nineteenth century and on the previous research concerning the city’s design, water supply and sewage system. In the second part we realized a Bluespots map comprised of the areas and the buildings possibly exposed to the risk of flooding during heavy rainfall periods. The Bluespots map was automatically obtained with the Cloudburst extension of ArcGIS, being based on DEM data and the cadastral map of the city, after a method firstly applied by the Danish government to assess flood risk areas due to Cloudburst phenomena in Copenhagen.