Impacts of urban development on urban water management at varying spatial and temporal scales

We consider the impact of random variations in the location of urban development on urban water management. The municipal plan for a medium-sized city is implemented in a detailed, vector-based urban development model. Locations where new developments occur at a given time point are varied randomly, and the effect on urban water management is tested by evaluating changes in the building area, the number of buildings subject to flood risk and the number of residents at different scales.

Urban development has substantial impact on these indicators, while random variations seem to impact urban water management mostly on the local spatial scales. This result is attributed to the short time horizon and the limited number of urban development locations considered in this work. On-going work focuses on simulating extended scenarios for urban development and on the inclusion of hydraulic modelling results.