A Generator-Disaggregation Approach for Evaluating Climate Change Impact on Urban Drainage

Abstract

Climate change on a global scale results in more intensive and frequent extreme rainfall events, which would likely increase the vulnerability of the urban drainage systems. Combing techniques of weather generator, Gumbel distribution, rainfall disaggregation and urban drainage modelling, this study examined impact of climate change on urban drainage flow based on the output from a number of global climate models (GCMs) for the timeline of the second half of this century. The proposed methods were employed on a small catchment in the tropical area for demonstration. The results showed that the selection of different GCMs (i.e., future climate conditions) exerted a remarkable effect on prediction of future maximum daily rainfall and the flooding condition of the drainage system. The impact of climate-induced extreme events is of significant concern and deserves more thorough investigation in the future.