Hydrological impacts of urban developments: modelling and decision-making concepts

The urbanisation of floodplains is commonly motivated due to the extensive areas with mild slopes. In non-structured regions, the lack of effective institutional frameworks for flood risk reduction is related to the unawareness of the hydrological impacts of urban developments, increasing the local vulnerability to natural hazards. It is inherent that, before the proposal of any land use and land cover (LULC) changes, the possible hydrological effects should be predicted, enhancing the possibility of mitigating the risk. However, in ungauged basins, hydrological models cannot always provide realistic outcomes, since data are scarce or non-representative. In the current study, a thorough discussion is conducted about the concepts of traditional hydrological models as well as the alternative multicriteria evaluation techniques, both used for the simulation of existing and expected LULC scenarios. The applicability and efficacy of environmental tools are also brought up to the discussion, in the context of urban planning. Accordingly, the related concepts revealed to be pertinent and feasible towards the sustainable development of urban floodplains12451