A Solution for Flood Control in Urban Area: Using Street Block and Raft Foundation Space Operation Model

The overdevelopment of urban area has decreased the city’s ground permeability and increased its surface runoff. Moreover, the urban area existing flood control system meets the high risk and new challenge for water resource management due to global warming and climate change. A huge idle raft foundation space of existing buildings in urban area is found to be practicable solution for urban flood control systems. Through the operation model using street block and raft foundation space in urban area can effectively reduce peak runoff during typhoon seasons and extreme rainfall periods. This study selected a certain street block in Taipei City and 47 typical typhoons as validation, and constructed a Street Block-Raft Foundation flood control model (SB-RF model). Firstly, the optimal solution for reducing peak runoff for the 47 typhoons was obtained using Linear Programming. Data from the optimal solution and Back Propagation Neural Network were then used to simulate the SB-RF model flood control. This paper not only demonstrates the effectiveness of proposed model in controlling urban floods, but establishes an expected average peak runoff reduction rate and proposes a methodology for optimizing flow controls. Results are proved to be useful as reference for urban flood control for urban area such as Taipei City during typhoon season. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014