A pioneering study from UC Irvine’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has unveiled a formula that highlights the relationship between urban design and flood severity. This breakthrough promises to aid global urban planning and mitigate risks in flood-prone areas.
Increased flooding due to stronger storms and urban growth has become a global challenge. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine have unveiled new findings indicating that building density and street networks significantly influence the intensity of urban flooding.
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the research combines urban planning with statistical mechanics to formulate a groundbreaking analytical model. This model enables urban planners worldwide to better assess flood risks posed by changing land development patterns.
“Application of statistical mechanics has yielded an analytical model that can project neighborhood-scale flood hazards anywhere in the world,” Mohammad Javad Abdolhosseini Qomi, an associate professor at UC Irvine, said in a news release. “We can probe differences between cities experiencing flood hazards. The platform has been demonstrated to show links between flood losses, urban form and observed rainfall extremes.”
The study paints a concerning future as severe weather events become more frequent in a warming climate. Urban areas with concentrated populations, many of whom may lack the means to protect themselves, are expected to be particularly vulnerable to flooding.
“Furthermore, detailed modeling worldwide is presently impossible for many cities because of inadequate data, so our team was motivated to develop a new way of looking at flood risk based on the form of the built urban environment,” lead author Sarah Balaian, a UC Irvine doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, said in the news release.
The researchers conducted thousands of flood simulations, grounded in the physical laws of motion, across various urban layouts globally.
“We created a physics-based dataset of flood depth and velocity for types of city layouts seen globally and then used data analysis techniques to derive a relatively simple formula that can be used for planning and vulnerability assessments globally,” added co-author Brett Sanders, UC Irvine’s Chancellor’s Professor of civil and environmental engineering.
The practical applications of this research are vast. It provides urban planners with a new tool to anticipate the impacts of land development on flood hazards, thereby improving city resilience. Additionally, this formula can be incorporated into civil engineering curricula, equipping future professionals with better predictive capabilities.
By connecting urban structure with flooding risks, the research shines a light on a path forward for cities worldwide, aiming to enhance preparedness and resilience against increasingly severe weather events.