Impact assessment of urbanization on flood risk in the Yangtze River Delta

The Yangtze River Delta region is the region with highest urbanization speed in China. In this study, 6 typical urbanization areas in Yangtze River Delta were selected as the objectives of study. Flood risk assessment index system was established based on the flood disaster formation mechanism, and analytic hierarchy process was utilized to define the weight of indices. The flood hazard, the exposure of disaster bearing body, the vulnerability of disaster bearing body and the comprehensive flood risk corresponding to three typical years in different urbanization stages, 1991, 2001 and 2006 were assessed. The results show that the flood hazard and the exposure of disaster bearing body in the 6 areas are all with an increasing trend in the process of urbanization, among which, the increasing trend of the exposure of disaster bearing body is especially obvious. Though the vulnerabilities of disaster bearing body in the 6 areas are all with decreasing trend owe to the enhancement of flood control and disaster mitigation capability, the comprehensive flood risks in the 6 areas increased as a whole, which would pose a serious threat to urban sustainable development. Finally, effective countermeasures for flood risk management of urbanization areas in Yangtze River Delta were put forward based on the assessment results.