Modeling urban planning contributions to flood resilience under shared socioeconomic pathways
Abstract Flooding from short-duration extreme rainfall poses growing risks to rapidly urbanizing regions under climate change. This study integrates 2035 urban planning into simulations of extreme rainfall-induced flooding in the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan region. Results show that while urban planning has limited impact on reducing overall hazard, it plays a critical role in redistributing it spatially. Flood hazard and exposure in 2035 were assessed under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Hazard decreases by about 10% in SSP1, remains stable in SSP2, and rises in SSP3 and SSP5, with SSP5 showing a 12% increase. Population exposure grows across all scenarios, with increases of 21% in SSP1, 25% in SSP2, 13% in SSP3, and 56% in SSP5. Asset exposure shows even larger increases, from 29% in SSP3 to more than 100% in SSP5. These results highlight that while urban planning can alleviate hazard locally, long-term resilience is dominated by socioeconomic development trajectories.
Authors
- Yichen Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0866-0295)
- Alistair Ford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8081-4239)
- Qiqi Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2938-1586)
- Qingsong Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0906-7290)
- Wenhan Feng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7824-9725)
- Anqi Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3316-6128)
- Wenhao Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-0688-6404)
- Liang Emlyn Yang
- Yimeng Liu
- Hao Su
- Junqi Mao
- Tianyi Sun
Institutions
- Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (CN)
- Peking University (CN)
- Fudan University (CN)
- Newcastle College (GB)
- Guangdong Urban & Rural Planning and Design Institute (CN)
- Technical University of Munich (DE)
- University of Newcastle Australia (AU)
- Renmin University of China (CN)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- Newcastle University (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Urban Sustainability
- Published
- 2026-02-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00353-w
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Flood Risk Assessment and Management
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 36.62
Funders
- China Scholarship Council
- Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology
- Nanjing University
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council