Urban Flood Dynamic Risk Assessment Based on Typhoon Rainfall Process: A Case Study of Typhoon “Lupit” (2109) in Fuzhou, China

Abstract

Flood disasters caused by typhoon rainfall seriously threaten regional social and economic development. Accurately assessing the risk of typhoons and their secondary disasters is a great challenge in disaster prevention and reduction. To address this, the city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province, which was severely affected by Typhoon “Lupit” (2109), was selected as a case study. A typhoon rainfall flood disaster system including four components (the disaster-causing factor, disaster-pregnant environment, disaster-bearing body, and disaster prevention and reduction capacity) was constructed. A typhoon-rainfall process comprehensive intensity index (TPCI) based on different time scales within the typhoon process was developed to accurately evaluate the flood risk. The TPCI represented the disaster-causing factors of rainfall intensity, duration, and concentration features. Geographical similarity and random forest (RF) were applied to screen 23 typical indices for an urban flood disaster risk assessment model. The results indicated that the TPCI based on a 6 h precipitation simulation at a 24 h time scale was highly effective in highlighting the role of short-term precipitation in the typhoon process. A total of 66.5% of the floodplain area had a medium-grade or higher TPCI value, while 32.5% of the area had a low-grade TPCI. Only 1% of the flooded areas were not identified, which indicated that the TPCI could accurately capture the risk of typhoon rainfall. The urban flood disaster risk assessment model comprehensively considered socioeconomic and natural environment conditions. High-risk areas were identified as regions with extreme precipitation and dense populations. The dynamic evaluation results accurately described the spatiotemporal differences in the flood disaster risk. A period of extreme precipitation lagged the landfall time of Typhoon “Lupit”, causing the proportion of areas above the medium–high-risk threshold of flood disasters to rapidly increase from 8.29% before the landfall of the typhoon to 23.57% before its demise. The high-risk areas of flood disasters were mainly distributed in the towns of Shangjie, Nanyu, and Gaishan, which was consistent with the observed disasters. These study findings could contribute to the development of effective measures for disaster prevention and reduction, and improve the resilience of urban areas to typhoon disasters.