Torrential Downpours Research Articles

Assessing the Settlement and Deformation of Pile-Supported Embankments Undergoing Groundwater-Level Fluctuations: An Experimental and Simulation Study

The intensification of extreme weather phenomena, ranging from torrential downpours to protracted dry spells, which trigger fluctuations at the groundwater level, poses a grave threat to the stability of embankments, giving rise to an array of concerns including cracking and differential settlement. Consequently, it is crucial to embark on research targeted at uncovering the settlement and deformation behaviors of pile-supported embankments amidst changes in water levels. In tackling this dilemma, a series of direct shear tests were carried out across a range of wet–dry cyclic conditions. The results confirmed that the occurrence of wet–dry cycles significantly impacted the resilience of silty clay. Additionally, it was observed that the erosion of cohesion and the angle of internal friction initially diminished sharply, subsequently leveling off, with the first wet–dry cycle exerting the most substantial influence on soil strength. Employing a holistic pile-supported embankment model, simulations revealed that variations in the groundwater level, fluctuations therein, varying descent rates, and periodic shifts in the groundwater level could all prompt alterations in soil settlement between embankment piles and could augment the peak tensile stress applied to geogrids. In summary, the orthogonal experimental method was utilized, indicating that, in terms of impacting embankment settlement under periodic water-level changes, the factors ranked in descending order were the following: pile spacing, pile length, embankment height, and the height of the groundwater table.

Design and Implementation of K-Band Electromagnetic Wave Rain Gauge System

In order to prevent and manage damage caused by localized torrential downpours, the quantitative observation of rainfall is crucial. Considering the spatial complexity and vertical variability of rainfall, it is important to obtain low-altitude, high-resolution radar observations to reduce uncertainty in radar rainfall estimates. In this paper, we present an electromagnetic wave rainfall gauge system (EWRG) that detects rainfall within the observation area and estimates the areal rainfall using electromagnetic waves. The EWRG system was developed based on a subminiature size antenna, a K-band dual-polarization transceiver, and advanced high-resolution, high-speed signal processing technology. The system design and signal processing techniques are described in detail. The EWRG has the advantage of overcoming the limitations of conventional cylindrical ground rain gauges, such as the contamination and spatial inaccuracy of rain gauges, which cause uncertainty in quantitative precipitation measurement.

Groundwater Recharge and Circulation in Dolomitic Aquifer Located in Semi-Arid Region: Evidence from the δ18O and δ2H Record, South Africa

Dolomitic aquifers are regarded as important groundwater storage sites in South Africa. Since these aquifers occur in a semi-arid climatic setting with low rainfall, often characterized by a torrential downpour and high potential evapotranspiration, the occurrence of active recharge is very limited (<5% of mean annual rainfall) as compared with the rainfall amount. The Malmani dolomites that have undergone greenschist metamorphism contain widespread caves and open karst structures at shallow levels, which facilitate groundwater recharge, circulation, storage and spring occurrence. However, the open karst structures receive recharge that passes through fractures in the vadose zone, which regulates the recharge through retardation and mixing processes. The integrated approach involving major ions and stable isotopes of water was applied to understand the recharge mechanism. The cave drip water samples were represented by the δ18O values of −3.95‰ to 3.32‰ and the δ2H values ranging from −11.0‰ to 27.7‰. On the other hand, the rainfall isotope results for δ18O fall between −16.11‰ and 5.38‰, while the δ2H values fall between −105.7‰ and 35.6‰. The most depleted Malapa springs contain δ18O of −5.64‰ and δ2H of −32.4‰. Based on the results, the mixing of water in the vadose zone could be considered as an indicator of the dominance of a slow-diffusive flow process in the aquifer as a result of poor fracture permeability. However, regional groundwater circulation through faults and dykes besides interconnected karst structures helps in generating highly productive karst springs in the region characterized by low rainfall.

The Cause of “Atmospheric Rivers”

Extreme flooding due to ”Atmospheric Rivers” has been observed for centuries, but they are considered to be natural events, with no known explanation for their occurrence. However, it has been observed that they are always preceded by periods of higher temperatures caused by volcanic droughts (periods of 4-5 years without any VEI4 or higher volcanic eruptions), where there are no remaining volcanic Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) aerosols circulating in Earth’s atmosphere, or other instances where atmospheric SO2 aerosol levels have been reduced, such as during American business recessions, (due to idled foundries, factories, etc.). With lower levels of SO2 aerosol pollution in the atmosphere, temperatures rise, and heat waves, droughts, famines, and torrential downpours happen around the world.

낙뢰 감지기를 이용한 태양광발전 설비 운영

Lightning not only destroys insulation as an abnormal voltage is induced in the electric circuit, but the current flowing at this time also causes a fire and acts as a factor that promotes the deterioration of parts. Recently, PV power generation devices are spreading from outside the city center to the inside of the city such as houses, apartments, and public offices, so electrical safety issues are emerging. In particular, among the failures of photovoltaic power generation facilities, surge failure accounts for 20% of the total failure rate, and during photovoltaic power generation, tens to hundreds of [A] of energy is emitted, leading to electrical safety accidents through electrical damage to inverters and connection boards. In addition, the frequency of lightning strikes and damage caused by lightning strikes are increasing along with torrential downpours due to extreme weather caused by global warming. In this paper, we intend to study the lightning protection operation system in line with the recent increase in the occurrence of lightning strikes and the resulting increase in electrical safety accidents and the need for safety measures in renewable energy facilities.

The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe

Reviewed by: The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War by Kenneth W. Noe Adam H. Petty (bio) The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War. Kenneth W. Noe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana States University Press, 2020. ISBN 978-0-8071-7320-6. 680 pp., cloth, $59.95. Kenneth Noe’s latest book, The Howling Storm, investigates the role weather played in the American Civil War. In particular, it focuses on weather’s effect on military campaigns. The book is foremost a narrative history. Most of its chapters are dedicated to retelling events in Virginia or the western theater, although there are occasional excursions to the Trans-Mississippi. The weather’s impact on Northern and Southern agriculture also receives some attention in Noe’s book, as does the soldiers’ yearly struggle to make themselves comfortable in winter quarters. While The Howling Storm is not encyclopedic, it covers a remarkable amount of ground for a single volume. As for the book’s argument, Noe contends that “a full understanding of the war requires regrounding it in the physical environment” (1). Not surprisingly, he concludes that “weather shaped every campaign, often more decisively than we have fathomed” (9). Moreover, in many instances, the weather “favored the Union cause and—perhaps even more—emancipation” (493). Better equipped boys in blue could withstand the elements with greater ease then their counterparts in gray. He also observes that Northern agriculture did not suffer the [End Page 433] catastrophic damage that spring rains and summer droughts inflicted on the Confederacy, resulting in food shortages south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Howling Storm, with just shy of five hundred pages of text, is not a quick read. Nor is it a page-turner. The many descriptions of soldiers suffering through the mud, rain, heat, and cold might prove monotonous to some readers. That being said, The Howling Storm is a very useful book. Its achievement lies in gathering an enormous amount of information about Civil War weather in one volume. In the past, good military historians included information about the weather in their campaign studies, but Noe’s book provides a relatively compact resource that historians can reference to see what the weather was up to at crucial moments of the Civil War. Because of the book’s broad approach, Noe is able to see larger patterns in the weather, conclusions that would escape more focused studies. For instance, he will note when a cold snap or a torrential downpour that affected one campaign was part of a larger weather system that was also affecting operations in a different theater. One concern that I have about this book is that it could mislead those who read it to think that weather was the most important factor controlling the events of the war. I do not mean to say that Noe asserts this or intended this outcome. Rather, it is simply a danger that comes with relying on any one analytical lens to tell a story. While Noe’s work provides a nice corrective to those who might have been tempted to ignore the weather’s influence, I think it is best read in conjunction with other military histories of the war, allowing readers to weigh the merits of weather as an explanatory tool. The Howling Storm is a great resource for those wanting to add a little information about the weather to their Civil War course, especially for historians who do not specialize in military history. All in all, lay readers and historians alike owe Noe a collective “Huzzah!” for this mammoth work and important contribution to Civil War history. Adam H. Petty History Department Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Adam H. Petty ADAM H. PETTY is a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers. He is the author of The Battle of the Wilderness in Myth and Memory: Reconsidering Virginia’s Most Notorious Civil War Battlefield (2019). Copyright © 2022 The Kent State University Press

Climate Disruption Caused by a Decline in Marine Biodiversity and Pollution

The world has focused on carbon mitigation as the only solution for climate change. This discussion paper considers how marine biodiversity regulates the climate, and the factors that control marine biodiversity.
 The main Greenhouse Gas (GHG) is water vapor, which accounts for 75% of all GHGs; the second most important is carbon dioxide, followed by methane and particulates such as black carbon (BC) soot. The concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is regulated by air temperature; warmer conditions lead to higher evaporation, which in turn increases the concentration of water vapor, the Clausius-Clapeyron relation. This means that as the oceans and atmosphere warm, a self-reinforcing feedback loop accelerates the evaporation process to cause further warming.
 It is not considered possible to directly regulate atmospheric water vapor. This explains why climate change mitigation strategies have focussed primarily on reducing carbon dioxide emissions as the means to reduce water vapor. This report concludes that the current climate change mitigation strategy will not work on its own because it depends on decreasing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and on the assumption that water vapor is only regulated by temperature.
 71% of planet Earth is covered by an ocean that has a surface microlayer (SML) between 1 µm and 1000µm deep, composed of lipids and surfactants produced by marine phytoplankton. This SML layer is known to promote the formation of aerosols and clouds; it also reduces the escape of water molecules and slows the transfer of thermal energy to the atmosphere. The concentration of water vapor is increasing in our atmosphere, and 100% of this increase is evaporation from the ocean surface; water vapour from land systems is decreasing. This means that the oceans are almost entirely responsible for climate change.
 The SML layer attracts toxic forever, lipophilic chemicals, microplastics and hydrophobic black carbon soot from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. Concentrations of toxic chemicals are 500 times higher in this SML layer than in the underlying water. Toxic forever chemicals combined with submicron and microplastic particles and black carbon particulates are known to be toxic to plankton. Marine primary productivity or phytoplankton photosynthesis may have declined by as much as 50% since the 1950s. Reduced phytoplankton plant growth equates to a degraded SML membrane, reduced carbon assimilation, and higher concentrations of dissolved carbon dioxide in ocean surface water, which accelerates the decline in ocean pH. The key phytoplankton species responsible for the production of the SML layer are the first to suffer from pH decline, a process called “ocean acidification”.
 Ocean acidification will lead to a regime shift away from the key carbonate-based species and diatoms below pH 7.95 which will be reached by 2045. The SML layer will decrease, allowing evaporation and atmospheric water vapor concentrations to increase. A reduced SML layer will lead to fewer aerosols, cloud formation and precipitation, as well as increased humidity and temperature. When clouds form under these conditions, the higher humidity will cause torrential downpours and flooding. The result could be catastrophic climate change, even if we achieve net zero by 2050. In parallel, ocean acidification and the collapse of the marine ecosystem could also lead to the loss of most seals, birds, whales, fish, and food supply for 3 billion people.

Disaster emergency preparedness literacy education and training for city dwellers: A proposed model

The heavy rains in Malaysia in 2021 caused big flooding and landslides in major cities have stunned the unprepared residents over the torrential downpours. The most affected city dwellers are among those low-income categories residents who live in low-cost housing and highly populated areas. Thus, this research is proposed to understand the state of disaster preparedness among city dwellers in Malaysia. The research will adopt a mixed methods approach. The qualitative approach will take place first in the data collection process. Subsequently, a quantitative approach will be conducted. The respondents will be among the city dwellers aged 20 and over. The expected findings will be the city dwellers' disaster preparedness effectiveness and efficiency in rebuilding their livelihood. They seem in line with the two decades government policy on Disaster Reduction Risk which started in the 1970s. The expected implication will be a new model of disaster emergency preparedness for city dwellers, particularly the low-income city dwellers including the special groups. Hence, the research output is expected to assist the emergency management of stakeholders in educating, monitoring, and acting upon the physical and mental preparedness at all levels.

ART-RISK 3.0 a fuzzy—based platform that combine GIS and expert assessments for conservation strategies in cultural heritage

Heritage preservation poses numerous difficulties, especially in emergency situations or during budget cuts. In these contexts, having tools that facilitate efficient and rapid management of hazards-vulnerabilities is a priority for the preventive conservation and triage of cultural assets. This paper presents the first (to the authors' knowledge) free and public availability Artificial Intelligence platform designed for conservation strategies in cultural heritage. Art-Risk 3.0 is a platform designed as a fuzzy-logic inference system that combines information from geographical information system maps with expert assessments, in order to identify the contextual threat level and the degree of vulnerability that heritage buildings present. Thanks to the possibilities that the geographic information system offers, 12 Spanish churches (11th - 16th centuries) were analyzed. The artificial intelligence platform developed makes it possible to analyze the index of hazard, vulnerability and functionality, classify buildings according to the risk in order to do a sustainable use of budgets through the rational management of preventive conservation. The data stored in the system allows identify the danger due to geotechnics, precipitation, torrential downpour, thermal oscillation, frost, earthquake and flooding. Through the use of fuzzy logic, the tool interrelates environmental conditions with 14 other variables related to structural risks and the vulnerability of buildings, which are evaluated through bibliographic search and review of photographic images. The geographic information system has identified torrential rains and thermal oscillations as the environmental threats that mostly impact heritage buildings in Spain. The results obtained highlight the Church of Santiago de Jesús as the most vulnerable building due to a lack of preventive conservation programs. These results, consistent with the inclusion of this monument on the list of heritage at risk defined by Hispania Nostra, corroborate the functionality of the model.

Impacts of rainfall on road crashes in Onitsha metropolis of Anambra State, Nigeria

The World Health Organization, in particular, is concerned about road traffic accidents that occur during rainfall. However, this has resulted in global deaths, injuries, and property losses. The effects of rainfall on road crashes in the Onitsha metropolis were investigated in this study. The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMET) provided rainfall data from 2009 to 2018, while the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Awka provided road accident data from 2009 to 2018. Pearson's Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were the statistical approaches used to achieve the research goal. The significance level for all inferential analyses was set at 95 percent (0.05). Yearly road crashes and annual rainfall amount have a negative relationship, according to the findings. Rainfall patterns are negatively and insignificantly linked with annual road crashes (p=0.153>0.05), showing that rainfall patterns are not the cause of road crashes in Onitsha. The correlation between monthly road crashes and rainfall received during wet season months is not significant, as demonstrated by the p-value (0.577). The relationship between monthly road crashes and rainfall recorded during dry season is not significant, as indicated by the p-value (0.797). The findings further reveal that, there are non-linear correlations between the rate of road crashes and the two seasons of the year because drivers were more careful when driving under rainfall. Therefore, slower driving during rainfall and parking of cars during torrential downpours are recommended by the study to further reduce the probability of road accidents.

The Brettenham storm of 25 July 2021

The <scp>Brettenham</scp> storm of 25 <scp>July</scp> 2021

Improvements of Education and Training for Capacity-building of Rescue and Aid at Inland Waters

The purpose of this study is to develop measures for preventing or minimizing causalities at inland waters, by examining the actual conditions of rescue and aid at Korean inland waters and diagnosing related problems. It, therefore, attempted to analyze the status and system of the activity of rescue and aid at inland waters in Korea at high risk of accidents at inland waters, as it is highly affected by changes in rainfall because of climate change caused by global warming, a localized torrential downpour and its geography characterized by many mountainous districts, and to investigate the cases in Japan of which the system of rescue and aid at inland waters is similar to those in Korea. The problems related to the activity of rescue and aid at inland waters include lack of experts engaging in rescue and aide at inland waters, poor ability and professionalism for site response and dispersed the management system for it. This study is expected to establishing practical education and training plans specific to localities and reviewing the activity of rescue and aid at inland waters.

The Impact of Tropical Cyclones in Premonsoonal Season on Local Convection over the Al-Hajar Mountains in Oman during 2007–2018

The tropical cyclones (TCs) and convective storms have a significant impact on triggering widespread flooding in vulnerable areas. However, it is not clear whether the TCs stimulate the convective precipitation over the Al-Hajar Mountains in Oman or suppress it although it had been shown in many studies that TCs suppress the local convection development. This study aims to test the applicability of the hypothesis that the TCs suppress the convection over mountainous to the Al-Hajar Mountains. In order to test the hypothesis of tropical cyclones’ impact on local convection development over the Al-Hajar Mountains, this study considers three different cases during the premonsoon season between 2007 and 2018. The results revealed that weak local convection is reported over the Al-Hajar Mountains during the presence of the cyclones in the Arabian Sea and during the period of their direct impacts. The rainfall in these cases was mainly from stratiform clouds. Therefore, the impact of TCs on the convective suppression over the mountains is applicable to the Al-Hajar Mountains. This study will provide decision-makers and policy creators with knowledge as to whether the Al-Hajar Mountains are susceptible and vulnerable to the risk of torrential downpour, flash flooding, and thunderstorms as what is believed to be.

Severe thunderstorm, Jersey, 25 June 2020

During the evening of 25 June 2020, thunderstorms developed over northern France before moving northwards towards the Channel Islands. One of these developed into a severe thunderstorm which affected Jersey for a couple of hours giving frequent lightning, strong gusts and torrential downpours leading to localised flash flooding. This article investigates the causes, development and impacts of the storm alongside some of the challenges associated with forecasting severe convection for a small island.

Una Watters: Everywoman Caught in the Rain

Una Watters:Everywoman Caught in the Rain Mary Morrissy (bio) girl going by trinity in the rain started it all. Painted in 1959, it shows a woman in profile dressed in a red coat, gripping an umbrella, passing in front of the stone façade of Trinity College Dublin. In the top left-hand corner of the painting the plinth of the statue of the eighteenth-century poet, playwright, and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith is just visible, but the rain is the focus of the work. Jagged, almost two-dimensional slashes with geometrical shadows vividly create the impression of a torrential downpour that the girl of the title has to battle against, giving the modest subject matter, a woman walking in the rain, a bold, modernist appeal. You can sense the physicality of the driving rain, sharp as razor blades, flinty and unforgiving like the austere frontage of Trinity. Apart from the young woman's bright red coat and umbrella, the only other departure from the somber palette is a band of luscious kelly green that bisects the canvas two-thirds of the way down. This band serves to emphasize the driving diagonals of the rain, as if the elements are literally bearing down and oppressing the figure of the woman. And yet she's pressing on, a stoic expression on her stylized face. She is Everywoman caught in the rain. But who is the artist? She is Dublin painter Una Watters, someone you've probably never heard of. How do some artists secure a place in the pantheon while others fade after death, their paintings lost from public view? Is it talent, accident, or luck that secures an artist's fate? In Una Watters's case, she certainly had the talent, but unlucky circumstances worked against her gaining a public reputation. Since 2018, I've been engaged in a campaign to restore—or perhaps to properly establish—the reputation of Una Watters (1918–1965) and to rescue her from what I think is unfair neglect. With the help of Una's family, particularly her niece Sheila Smith, we set out to locate the thirty-seven oil paintings that [End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Una Watters, Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain (1959; oil on canvas, 78.74 x 56.42 cm), private collection If the "girl" in Watters's painting references the Danaë myth, then this Danaë is suited and booted and shielding herself against the Irish-style shower—read steely, icy-gray rather than golden—that seems to emanate from Goldsmith. [End Page 40] were shown in a posthumous exhibition of Una's work at the Dublin Painters Gallery in November 1966, the last time her art was on public display. This exhibition was arranged by her widower, the Irish-language novelist and poet Eugene Watters (Eoghan Ó Tuairisc), as a monument to Una's talent and a kind of artistic wake. We're hoping to re-create that exhibition with twenty-seven of Una's recovered oils in Dublin in spring 2022. Our quest has taken us all over the country—from a disused ballroom in Ballinasloe (pace Derek Mahon) to attics and living rooms in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, and beyond. We have not traced all her work—and along the way we've discovered paintings we didn't know existed—but we're hoping that the collation of a body of Una's work in one place for the first time in over fifty years will have a transformative effect on her reputation, alerting art scholars and the public to a singular artistic talent. Let me say from the start that I'm not an art historian by training, so resurrecting Una, as I like to think of it, is a personal crusade inspired solely by a deep admiration of her work rather than any professional expertise. I never met Una; I've come to know her only through her paintings, perhaps the purest relationship one can have with an artist. But I've been in the lucky position of living for the past twenty years with Girl Going by Trinity in the Rain (oil on canvas, 78.74 x...

Impacts of Meteorological Factors on 119 Emergency Medical Services: Focused on Busan

This study aims to analyze the impacts of meteorological factors on 119 Emergency Medical Services (EMS). Busan in 2017 was set as the temporal and spatial subject. It identified the differences in the effects of each meteorological factor on the characteristics of the 119 EMS and investigated the degree of weakness in the provision of EMS due to weather abnormalities. The characteristics of EMS were defined by the number of dispatches, EMS time, distance to dispatch, and the ratio of dispatches outside the jurisdiction in the 119 EMS activity report of the Busan Fire Headquarter. Meteorological factors included temperature, wind speed, and precipitation data from the Korea Meteorological Administration's Automatic Weather System (AWS), and the meteorological abnormality was set as heavy rain that occurred in Busan on September 11, 2017. The results of the regression analysis on the relationship between weather and EMS reveal that the weather factors affect the characteristics of EMS, although it differs according to the first factor. In particular, an increase in temperature and rainfall tends to negatively affect the proper provision of EMS. Weather anomalies, such as the torrential downpour on September 11, 2017, acted as a factor that made the provision of emergency services more vulnerable.

Experimental study of the woody debris trapping efficiency of a steel pipe, open sabo dam

In recent years, the damage caused to human settlements in Japan by large woody debris (LWD) has been increasing. For example, the 2013 Izu Oshima typhoon resulted in a large number of fatalities and missing persons, and the Kagoshima Typhoon Disaster and Northern Kyusyu torrential downpour caused vast infrastructure damage due to the associated LWD. Current countermeasures for preventing LWD are insufficient to maintain the safety of residential areas. One type of protective barrier, the open sabo dam, has been constructed in Japan during the past 30 years. The primary function of open sabo dams is to block the flow of boulders, thereby also reducing sediment flow by reducing the gap size. However, because Japanese open sabo dams are designed specifically for boulder-trapping, the ability of these dams to trap LWD remains uncertain. In particular, many problems have been reported with respect to sediment trapping by driftwood with roots in an open sabo dam setting. The objective of this study was to examine the trapping efficiency of open sabo dams for LWD and sediment. The experimental approach clarified the influence of driftwood, without and with roots, on sediment trapping for a straight-channel flume. The flexible roots of the driftwood were shown to have a significant effect on the sediment trapping efficiency of the dam.

Hubristic Hydraulics: Water, Dictatorship, and Modernity in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I focus on how water operated as symbolic capital during the notoriously repressive dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930–61) in the Dominican Republic. Under his regime, alongside an apex of territorial control and modern aesthetics came a nadir of political freedoms. During Trujillo's tenure, water took on important symbolic and material dimensions as a conduit for authoritarianism: it served as a tool to bind together dictatorial power and spatial order through a mode of territorial and urban design rooted in hubristic hydraulics. With hubristic hydraulics I refer to the strategic ways that water flow was harnessed through infrastructure and choreographed through landscape and monumental architecture to embody and lionize the dictator's power. Channeled into reflecting pools, nationwide irrigation works, and monumental fountains, water functioned at the juncture of aesthetics and politics as an important tool in the modernization of urban space and the territory at large. Water was a strategic resource that enabled Trujillo to be cast as the “arquitecto de la patria nueva” (the architect of a new fatherland), and the ways it was made to flow through modern architecture and infrastructure offer an illuminating means to expose the entanglement of territorial control, urban modernity, and authoritarian politics.

July 2019 A quiet three weeks, then heat, thunder and torrential downpours

July 2019 A quiet three weeks, then heat, thunder and torrential downpours

Assessing Urban Areas’ Vulnerability to Flood Disaster Based on Text Data: A Case Study in Zhengzhou City

Confronting the frequent flood disasters triggered by torrential downpour, the vulnerability of urban rainstorm flood disasters was analyzed with one highly popular area of research in mind: big data. Web crawler technology was used to extract text information related to floods from Internet and popular social media platforms. Combining these text data with traditional statistical data, a flood disaster vulnerability assessment model based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was established to evaluate rainstorm and flood disaster vulnerability, and the spatial distribution characteristics of vulnerability to pluvial flooding were analyzed based on Geographic Information System (GIS). The established model was applied in Zhengzhou, a city that often suffers from heavy rainstorms. The results show that the areas located near downtown Zhengzhou were more vulnerable to rainstorm and flooding than others, and most of the city could be at moderate and high vulnerability. Finally, the waterlogging spots extracted from various sources were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed model. The results show that most of waterlogging spots were located in very-high and high risk zones, while less waterlogging spots were found in districts with low vulnerability, which demonstrates the discriminative power of the established model based on big data sources. This study overcomes limited data in flood disaster vulnerability assessment methods and provides a basis for flood control and management in cities.