Floodability: A New Paradigm for Designing Urban Drainage and Achieving Sustainable Urban Growth

Goffredo La Loggia (), Valeria Puleo () and Gabriele Freni ()
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Goffredo La Loggia: Università degli Studi di Palermo
Valeria Puleo: Università degli Studi di Palermo
Gabriele Freni: Università degli studi di Enna Kore

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2020, vol. 34, issue 10, No 20, 3424 pages

Abstract: Abstract For a large part of human history, urbanization was focused on two main objectives: defence and resource harvesting. The first objective was always achieved in a broad sense, i.e., defending the population from other humans and from natural events. Focusing on human activities, this defensive approach was also applied to urban drainage, which resulted in a systematic underestimation of the impacts of urbanization on natural systems. Environmental sustainability was introduced in an attempt to mitigate these impacts, as they had the potential to endanger future developments; thus, the possibility that urban floods may be the lesser evil was accepted. Resilience was then introduced to improve not only defence of urban areas but also their ability to recover from negative events, even though physical resilience is not always accompanied by social resilience. This paper attempts to address the philosophy of urban drainage design, introducing the new concept of floodability as an evolution of flood resilience by identifying its requirements and drivers and by using real examples to present the new concept.

Keywords: Flooding risk; Mitigation measures; Sustainable urban drainage systems; Floodproofing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1007/s11269-020-02620-6

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