scholarly journals Sponge City Program (SCP) and Urban Flood Management (UFM)—The Case of Guiyang, SW China

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 2784
Author(s):  
Yunfei Qi ◽  
Faith Ka Shun Chan ◽  
James Griffiths ◽  
Meili Feng ◽  
Yanfang Sang ◽  
...  

Flood management is a complex issue in Chinese cities that exhibit high populations and have undergone rapid urbanization. Urban flood management (UFM) approaches can be used to mitigate urban flood risk. To address urban issues of poor water quality and urban surface flooding, the Sponge City Program (SCP) was initiated in 2013 in China. The SCP aims to provide an opportunity for Chinese cities to improve their current UFM practices. This study looks at Guiyang (a pilot sponge city located in SW China) as a case study to identify the challenges and opportunities of UFM in China. Guiyang is a valley city surrounded by a hilly landscape. Using interview records and flood data, we illustrate that the primary type of flood in Guiyang is fluvial rather than surface water flooding. In Guiyang, the current function and targets of the SCP have yet to engage with the catchment level flood management, instead mainly focusing on the site-specific context (i.e., community level). Catchment flood management planning (CFMP) and natural flood management (NFM) both address this problem and may be a more suitable approach to manage flood discharge from the upper and middle catchments in Guiyang. In addition, it is suggested that a mixed option combining “hard” infrastructure (e.g., reservoirs and floodwalls) with “soft” flood management measures (e.g., improving people awareness and participation) may improve urban flood resilience in Chinese cities.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Lashford ◽  
Matteo Rubinato ◽  
Yanpeng Cai ◽  
Jingming Hou ◽  
Soroush Abolfathi ◽  
...  

In recent decades, rapid urbanization has resulted in a growing urban population, transformed into regions of exceptional socio-economic value. By removing vegetation and soil, grading the land surface and saturating soil air content, urban developments are more likely to be flooded, which will be further exacerbated by an anticipated increase in the number of intense rainfall events, due to climate change. To date, data collected show that urban pluvial flood events are on the rise for both the UK and China. This paper presents a critical review of existing sustainable approaches to urban flood management, by comparing UK practice with that in China and critically assessing whether lessons can be learnt from the Sponge City initiative. The authors have identified a strategic research plan to ensure that the sponge city initiative can successfully respond to extreme climatic events and tackle pluvial flooding. Hence, this review suggests that future research should focus on (1) the development of a more localized rainfall model for the Chinese climate; (2) the role of retrofit SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems) in challenging water environments; (3) the development of a robust SuDS selection tool, ensuring that the most effective devices are installed, based on local factors; and (4) dissemination of current information, and increased understanding of maintenance and whole life-costing, alongside monitoring the success of sponge cities to increase the confidence of decision makers (5) the community engagement and education about sponge cities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6346
Author(s):  
Nawnit Kumar ◽  
Xiaoli Liu ◽  
Sanjena Narayanasamydamodaran ◽  
Kamlesh Kumar Pandey

India and China are among the two most populous countries in the world that concomitantly incur substantial flood-related losses, and both countries are also experiencing rapid urbanization. This study was conducted to trace the major urban flooding cases in these countries between 2014 and 2020 and probe into their existing flood mitigation policies with special focus on China’s Sponge City Program (SCP). A systematic review using preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA) was conducted. Results showed that both these countries experienced comparable challenges in terms of the need for localized low impact development (LID) planning given their extensive geographically induced diversities. Improved inter-governmental and inter-agential coordination, new avenues of funding involving public and private enterprises with accommodations to source local products and services to boost local economies, improved practical and technical understanding for working professionals and improved community acceptance and participation are also recommended. It is concluded that India should try to focus on holistic urban water resilience as China does with its Sponge City Program and that China should take a cue from India’s contractual and tender-based private service sourcing methods to tide over its financial setbacks in order to achieve its ambitious targets for 2030.


Author(s):  
James Griffiths ◽  
Faith Ka Shun Chan ◽  
Michelle Shao ◽  
Fangfang Zhu ◽  
David Laurence Higgitt

‘Sponge City’ is the term used to describe the Chinese government's approach to urban surface water management. The concept was conceived in 2014 in response to an increasing incidence of urban flooding or water-logging in Chinese cities. While ambitious and far-reaching in its aim (of decreasing national flood risk, increasing water supply and improving water quality), the initiative must be implemented by individual subprovincial or municipal-level government entities. Thus, while the concept is similar to sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) in the UK (or low-impact development (LID) in the USA), it is developing with different regional characteristics, and during continuing rapid urbanization. Indeed, the increasing use of national rather than international examples of best practice reflects a growing body of knowledge that has evolved since the start of the Sponge City initiative. In this paper, interpretation and development of the national Sponge City guidelines are assessed for the Ningbo Municipality, an affluent and rapidly expanding city on China's low-lying east coast. While climate, geology and socio-economic factors can all be seen to influence the way that national guidelines are implemented, project financing, integration and assessment are found to be of increasing influence. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Urban flood resilience’.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bing Li ◽  
Shou Dong ◽  
Yue Huang ◽  
Guang Wang

Rapid urbanization, inappropriate urban planning and the changing climate in many countries have resulted in flooding, water shortage and water pollution around the world. Although the sponge city concept has been applied in both macro-scales and micro-scales to address those challenges, research on the heterogeneity of different cities for sponge city construction and the collaborative management between cities is insufficient. Therefore, this paper proposes a multivariate cluster analysis framework and conducts an empirical study using 96 Chinese cities. By considering the local infrastructure, economic development, water resource distribution, water quality and precipitation characteristics in each city, and integrating the principal component analysis and a self-organizing feature mapping network, this paper shows the potential of regional and interregional sponge city collaborative management. This will provide an opportunity for developing a new sponge city management mechanism and will promote the establishment of multi-functional departments for urban flood control and water quality improvement.


Author(s):  
Femin Maria IX ◽  
Elba Helen George

Due to the global climate change and the rapid progress of urbanization, the frequent occurrence of flooding disasters and severe pollution seriously threaten the sustainable development of modern cities. To solve these problems, China first started the construction of the ‘Sponge City’. Sponge city can improve city’s ability to adapt to the environment change and to cope with floods; it can also make them more sustainable. It was not only meant for urban flood control, but also rainwater harvest, ecological restoration of urban land and water quality improvement. The rainfall received in 2020 in Hyderabad of India, has been the highest for the month October in a century. The risk is going to increase year after year in the whole nation. So India too needs a mission that mitigates flood risk and provides a pathway to water security. And the most promising solution across the world at this time can be the idea to adopt Sponge city construction. Improper research in this field will lead to huge maintenance difficulties and other related problems. This paper mainly focuses on presenting the concepts of sponge city construction along with its pathway. Not only does it focus on Sponge city’s benefits, but also its challenges are also stated, which leads to better understanding about its scope of continuing for future. Keywords: Flood control, sponge city, green infrastructure, urban floods.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 583
Author(s):  
Albert Z. Jiang ◽  
Edward A. McBean

Urban flood-related issues are substantial in China, arising from rapid construction of megacities over decades with insufficient flood control, all being made worse by climate change. Since Sponge City (SC) options are primarily effective at maintaining the water balance at the surface, flooding continues. In response, the One Water concept is used to demonstrate the need to respond to dimensions beyond SC and shown herein to have potential to reduce the impacts of major storms (e.g., suppress 100-year flooding to a 25-year flooding equivalent). However, climate change causes more intense storms, indicating the intensity of the 100-year storm will increase by ~0.23% annually over the next 70 years. Hence, given sufficient SC options, the 100-year storms may only be effectively reduced to a 50-year storm, at best by SC options. “One Water” is utilized as a concept to demonstrate structured thinking about how each dimension of the hydrologic cycle can be employed to consider the degree of interconnection, allowing improved assessment of various components of the hydrologic cycle and SC options. Examples are used to demonstrate how the concept of One Water links the array of components of the hydrologic cycle together, generating a holistic view of urban water resource security.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Wang ◽  
Jiahong Liu ◽  
Hao Wang ◽  
Chao Mei

<p>Under the background of climate change and rapid urbanization,the risk of urban flood is increasing across the globe. To alleviate the urban flooding problems, the sponge city strategy has been proposed in China. The urban flood control system based on sponge city is gradually formed, which is an integrated system composed of green and grey infrastructure. However, mechanism of the corresponding flood control function and corresponding quantitative assessment of flood control capacity of the integrated green and grey infrastructure is relatively lacking. Based on polit sponge cities in China, this study summarized and put forward the construction mode of urban inundation control system of sponge city, including source control system, stormwater pipe network system, over-standard stormwater storage and drainage system, etc., identified the mechanism of urban flood control functions of urban flood control system, including detaining, releasing, peak rate cutting, peak rate delaying and discharging the stormwater runoff. Furthermore, a gauss-function based approach for quantitative flood control capacity assessment of integrated green and grey infrastructure was established. This study builds the relationship between the gauss function and mechanism of urban flood control capacity, according to the mathematical meaning of parameters of the gauss function. It provides a new method for urban flood control capacity assessment of the integrated green and grey infrastructure.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faith Chan

<p>‘<em>Sponge City Program</em>’ (SCP) is the term used to describe the Chinese government’s approach to urban surface water management. The concept was conceived in 2014 in response to an increasing incidence of urban surface flooding in many Chinese cities. While ambitious and far-reaching in its aim (of reducing national flood risk, increasing water supply and improving water quality), the initiative must be implemented by individual sub-provincial or municipal-level government entities. The concept is similar to <em>Blue-Green Cities</em> (BGCs); <em>sustainable drainage systems</em> (SuDS) in the UK, it is developing with different regional climatic and hydrological characteristics, considering rapid urbanization. Indeed, the increasing use of national rather than international examples of best practice reflects a growing body of knowledge that has evolved since the start of the Sponge City initiative. The SCP so far now has run through 6 years and experience a transition on urban stormwater management and planning practices. In this paper, the implementation of the latest SCP guidelines will be presented that using the case of Ningbo and other Chinese cities to illustrate the transformation of the current SCP practices that undertaking the consideration of climate, environmental and socio-economic factors, and how the practice tackle challenges on governance, project financing, integration and assessment by the authorities and stakeholders. These valuable experiences will be vitally important influencing future urban stormwater management and planning practices in Chinese cities.</p>


The process of urbanization has changed overall Land use/Land cover patterns which are being attributed to flooding and resulting in the economic damages from flooding events. This current study aims to evaluate the implication of spatiotemporal changes of LULC Pattern on the flood risk of Surat city (Gujarat, India), Lower Tapi Basin. The Topographical maps and satellite imagery of Resources-1 of the year 1968 and the year 2006 respectively are used for analyses the urbanization index. As the flood risk is a combination of flood hazard, and vulnerability of the urbanized area, flood losses are expected to rise due to change in each of these aspects. The remote sensing and spatial analysis tools of Geographic Information System (GIS) have been used to statistically examine the flood risk index along with their different land-use scenarios. It has been observed that other than natural processes, rapid urbanization obstructions are being considered as one of the main drivers of flood risk aggravation, and if so, it has made essential for the implementation of flood management approach at the top priority for reducing the risk of flood.


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