Enhancing the Urban Resilience to Flood Risk Through a Decision Support Tool for the LID-BMPs Optimal Design

Urban areas are becoming increasingly susceptible to flooding because of high urbanization levels and changes in the precipitation patterns caused by climate change. The effective management of urban water drainage systems is particularly relevant to control and regulate the runoff impacts. Nevertheless, the mitigation of climate change effects and the adaptation to its impacts call for the implementation of new sustainable strategies and solutions. In this context, a key role can be played by Low Impact Development (LID) technologies of Best Management Practices (BMPs). Such innovative design approaches can lead to more sustainable and effective strategies for urban runoff control. In this paper, a methodology to increase the urban resilience to flooding risk through LID-BMPs is proposed and discussed. A tool for the optimal selection and design of different LID-BMPs is presented. The tool couples GIS processing with hydraulic simulations, constituting a Decision Support System (DSS) based on the meta-heuristic optimization algorithm Harmony Search (HS). The methodology was tested on the case study site of Soccavo, a suburban area in the Municipality of Naples (Italy). Several LID measures, including bio-retention systems, porous pavements, green roofs, were considered. Then, the effectiveness of combining LIDs with grey solutions to carry out hybrid solutions was also assessed. Results showed the capability of the proposed approach in detecting technically and economically viable solutions.