Global Megacities and Frequent Floods: Correlation between Urban Expansion Patterns and Urban Flood Hazards

Abstract

With climate change causing increased extreme weather events, megacities worldwide are experiencing unprecedentedly devastating floods and recurring flood damage. Investigating global megacities’ increased disposition to flooding will aid in developing sustainable flood-risk-management frameworks. Many studies have been conducted on the association between land-cover types and flood consequences, but few on investigating urban expansion patterns’ correlation with flood hazard and risk. This study examines the correlation between urban expansion patterns and increased flood hazards. Twelve megacities throughout the world were selected for this study. After exploring the possibility of the megacities having experienced flooding, we qualified their patterns of urban expansion and their potential to influence the elements of flood risk. Our results revealed that edge expansion and leapfrogging patterns had a strong positive correlation with statistical significance with flood hazard, while infilling had a weak positive correlation that showed no statistical significance with flood hazard. Further, we found that the megacities have all experienced devastating floods in the past two decades. Flood risk frameworks need to account for the impact of these patterns, and future urban planning designs and policies need to incorporate flood risk frameworks that account for patterns of urban expansion.