An open framework for analysing future flood risk in urban areas

Abstract

A combination of climate change and urban development are increasing flood risk in cities worldwide, however analysing both drivers of risk is especially complex as new buildings alter surface water flows changing flood events. This paper provides an overview of the approaches, algorithms, design, and capabilities of the OpenCLIM urban flooding workflow which attempts to address this, coupling building-scale models of urban development with high-resolution simulations of urban flooding. The workflow retrieves and processes national-scale datasets, automatically configuring data and models, thereby significantly reducing user effort in commissioning simulations of risk analysis. A demonstration for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK) reveals hotspots of changes in risk and exposure are altered by both urban development and changes in rainfall, with climate change the most significant driver. The workflow is made accessible and transparent via DAFNI (www.dafni.ac.uk), a national computing facility, providing a vital tool for routine and repeatable urban flood risk analysis.