Simulating the Effect of Green Infrastructure on Flood Mitigation under
Extreme Rainfalls
Abstract
Urban drainage systems are facing major challenges with rapid
urbanization and climate change, especially for developing countries.
Green infrastructure (GI) is a natural-based solution expected to reduce
flooding and help in water pollution control. Notwithstanding multiple
research have discussed the contribution of GI to climate change
adaptation. The efficiency of GI to extreme events in the context of the
more frequent extreme precipitation events has received limited
attention in the literature. This study aims to quantify the impact of
historical and future extreme rainfalls on overflow flooding, pollutant
transport, and GI’s potential in flood control by taking Phnom Penh
City, the capital of Cambodia, as a case study. Firstly, we predicted
the history of sub-daily extreme rainfall (1986-2005) by disaggregating
outputs of various regional climate models based on the Artificial
Neural Network (ANN) method. Secondly, we generated the future
intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves based on sub-daily extreme
rainfall (2026-2045) and input the design rainfall time series (based on
the scenarios of RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) into a hydrological model (PCSWMM)
to investigate the impact of climate change on urban drainage systems,
including the flooding and pollution (suspended solids). The model
successfully captured the variation of overflow flooding and transport
of pollutants. Thirdly, we introduced four mitigation measures of GI and
simulated their effectiveness against climate change with different
extreme rainfall events. The results indicate that future climate change
will increase the risk of overflow flooding and more pollutants diffuse
on urban surfaces. The GI is an effective method to mitigate its impact,
but the performance decreases with rainfall intensity. The effect of
increased rainfall is consistent for different GI. PP is most effective
in relieving the pressure of extreme rainfall for total flood, peak
flow reduction, and pollutant removal. Although GR performs reasonably
well in flood control, it is the least effective in pollutant
control. It can be seen that more research is needed in the
implementation and optimization of GI.