Designing with Ecosystem Modelling: The Sponge District Application in İzmir, Turkey

Stefano Salata and Bertan Arslan
Additional contact information
Stefano Salata: Laboratory od Ecosystem Planning and Circular Adaptation—Lab EPiCA, City and Regional Planning Department, İzmir Institute of Technology, Urla 35430, Turkey
Bertan Arslan: Laboratory od Ecosystem Planning and Circular Adaptation—Lab EPiCA, City and Regional Planning Department, İzmir Institute of Technology, Urla 35430, Turkey

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-26

Abstract: Climate change is threatening coastal cities affected by multiple hazards worldwide. Due to the increase in extreme weather events and the low capacity of cities to adapt to these odds, losses, exposure, and fatalities arise with the occurred events. Besides, traditional hazard mapping and risk planning techniques often fall behind when facing a climate crisis since extreme changes in quantity, frequency, and distribution of meteorological phenomena are observed. Specific and localized flood vulnerability mitigation strategies need to be developed, particularly for settlements on coastal and sloppy areas with a high risk of stream accumulation during rainfall days. This paper uses the urban flood risk mitigation of Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) generated within the Natural Capital Project to determine İzmir’s cloudburst vulnerability level. The city has experienced several cloudbursts in the last couple of months which inundated densely populated areas. The soil’s hydrologic conductibility and the land use/land cover (LULC) map were required as main inputs. The LULC map was produced on the basis of surface imperviousness. The model calculates the run-off volume and how much is retained by soil and vegetation. Outputs were used to concretely apply the sponge district concept while designing performance-based ecosystem solutions. In the light of the findings, the new performance-based design demonstrated how digital ecosystem modelling could support the urban design decision-making process.

Keywords: flood management; climate vulnerability; risk mitigation; adaptation; urban planning; sponge districts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3420/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/6/3420/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:6:p:3420-:d:771280

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().