Modelling the impact of land subsidence on urban pluvial flooding: A case study of downtown Shanghai, China

- Land subsidence can lead to non-linear response of pluvial flood characteristics.
- The impact is generally minor and limited to areas with lowest-lying topographies.
- The impact depends on the interplay between subsidence pattern and microtopography.

This paper presents a numerical analysis of pluvial flooding to evaluate the impact of land subsidence on flood risks in urban contexts using a hydraulic model (FloodMap-HydroInundation2D). The pluvial flood event of August 2011 in Shanghai, China is used for model calibration and simulation. Evolving patterns of inundation (area and depth) are assessed over four time periods (1991, 1996, 2001 and 2011) for the downtown area, given local changes in topography and rates of land subsidence of up to 27 mm/yr. The results show that land subsidence can lead to non-linear response of flood characteristics. However, the impact on flood depths is generally minor (< 5 cm) and limited to areas with lowest-lying topographies because of relatively uniform patterns of subsidence and micro-topographic variations at the local scale. Nonetheless, the modelling approach tested here may be applied to other cities where there are more marked rates of subsidence and/or greater heterogeneity in the depressed urban surface. In these cases, any identified hot-spots of subsidence and focusing of pluvial flooding may be targeted for adaptation interventions.