Disruption and adaptation of urban transport networks from flooding

Maria Pregnolato*, Alistair Ford, Richard Dawson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference Paperpeer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Transport infrastructure networks are increasingly vulnerable to disruption from extreme rainfall events due to increasing surface water runoff from urbanization and changes in climate. Impacts from such disruptions typically extend far beyond the flood footprint, because of the interconnection and spatial extent of modern infrastructure. An integrated flood risk assessment couples high resolution information on depth and velocity from the CityCAT urban flood model with empirical analysis of vehicle speeds in different depths of flood water, to perturb a transport accessibility model and determine the impact of a given event on journey times across the urban area. A case study in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK) shows that even minor flooding associate with a 1 in 10 year event can cause traffic disruptions of nearly half an hour. Two adaptation scenarios are subsequently tested (i) hardening (i.e. flood protection) a single major junction, (ii) introduction of green roofs across all buildings. Both options have benefits in terms of reduced disruption, but for a 1 in 200 year event greening all roofs in the city provided only three times the benefit of protecting one critical road junction, highlighting the importance of understanding network attributes such as capacity and flows.

Original languageEnglish
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Oct 2016
Event3rd European Conference on Flood Risk Management, FLOODrisk 2016 - Lyon, France
Duration: 17 Oct 201621 Oct 2016

Conference

Conference3rd European Conference on Flood Risk Management, FLOODrisk 2016
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityLyon
Period17/10/1621/10/16

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