FRURB offers a comprehensive approach to manage urban sprawl and inadequate planning accentuates the problem with flash floods, which steams from change on extreme events patterns due to profound change on hydrological processes. Urban areas are particularly vulnerable to flash floods due to the high concentration of assets infrastructures and people. It is important to understand the relationship between urban characteristics (intensity and location in the catchment, drainage system) and hydrological processes linked to urban flash floods, where strategies and tools need to be developed to prevent these occurrences. This may be achieved by improving urban planning to include new hydrology concepts in disturbed areas. Due to the assets values in urban areas, the adaptation measures and resilience capacity will be more effective if we predict the location, frequency and magnitude of flash floods.

The Project presents a more efficient management approach of flash floods by developing new planning strategies and identifying beforehand the areas in greater danger, by using state of the art physically based spatial distribution models. To develop highly effective approaches to reduce flood magnitude and frequency, the project will analyze planning and management practices within two proposed study areas.

FRURB also aims to develop effective alleviation strategies. Special emphasis will be given to the potential for structural and non-structural defense strategies to mitigate flood risk. The project´s base hypothesis is that it implies the identification and use of land feature to reduce connectivity and transferability of water fluxes between catchment compartments. Thus, the project will search for buffers, barriers and blankets within the catchments that could be used to reduce the magnitude and frequency of urban floods. Implementing these solutions reduce urban flood risk will require new paradigms, planning and management tools to control urban sprawl and develop sound medium/long term land use strategies.

Cristina Ribeiro
Research Fellow

Maria de Fátima Lopes Alves
Consultant

Sandra M. Valente
Researcher