Socioeconomic Impact on Urban Resilience against Flood Damage

Abstract

While urban populations are rapidly increasing around the world, floods have been frequently and seriously occurring due to the climate crisis. As existing disaster prevention facilities have specific limitations in completely protecting against flood damages, the concept of resilience, which emphasizes the ability to recover after becoming injured and harmed by a flood, is necessary to mitigate such damages. However, there is still a scarcity of studies that quantitatively show the relationship between the resilience and the socioeconomic costs, even though a variety of evaluation methods exist in the literature. This study aims to quantitively analyze the socioeconomic impact of flooding on the urban environment based on the concept of resilience. A method of evaluating four properties of resilience (redundancy, rapidity, resourcefulness, and robustness) through damage function and network analysis was used to measure changes in resilience against flood damages. In addition, to determine the socioeconomic impact of flooding, the costs incurred due to transportation delays and the lack of labor participation were evaluated. Differences in structural and social systems have led to variations in resilience and socioeconomic costs. As a future study, if the circumstances after flood events based on risk-based recovery can be evaluated, more effective urban flooding defense decisions would be expected.