Urban flood drifters (UFD): identification, classification and characterisation
Author(s)
Bayon, Arnau
Valero, Daniel
Franca, Mario J
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Extreme floods threaten lives, assets and ecosystems, with the largest impacts occurring in urbanised areas. However, flood mitigation schemes generally neglect the fact that urban floods carry a considerable amount of solid load. In this study, we define urban flood drifters (UFDs) as loose objects present in the urban landscape that can become mobile under certain flow conditions, thereafter blocking drainage infrastructure and endangering both downstream and upstream communities. Based on 270 post-flood photographic records from 63 major inundations of the past quarter-century across 46 countries, we provide a comprehensive analysis of UFDs and their flood-hazard implications. We show that a variety of vehicles, furniture and a heterogeneous mixture of drifters are present in post-flooding scenarios. Plastic, construction debris and wood (natural or anthropogenic) dominate the statistics of transported drifters in urban floods (with frequencies of roughly 50%–60% each), followed by cars (present in 31.5% of post-flood images). Other heavy vehicles are readily observed in post-flood imagery and furniture such as bins, garden sheds or water tanks also appear occasionally, therefore suggesting that they can play a relevant role in extreme floods.
Date Issued
2024-09-01
Date Acceptance
2024-04-22
Citation
Journal of Flood Risk Management, 2024, 17 (3)
ISSN
1753-318X
Publisher
Wiley
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Flood Risk Management
Volume
17
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Flood Risk Management published by Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Subjects
BLOCKAGE
blocking
CENTRAL-EUROPE
DAMAGE
data mining
drainage
dumpster
Environmental Sciences
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
EVENT
flood risk
IMPACT
infrastructure
JULY 2021
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
MANAGEMENT
MODELS
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS
Physical Sciences
plastic
RISK
Science & Technology
vehicle
Water Resources
wood
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e13002
Date Publish Online
2024-05-19