27 May 2013

Impacts of Climate Change on Rainfall Extremes and Urban Drainage Systems

by Rosa Vicari / École des Ponts ParisTech

The impact of climate change on the increased vulnerability of cities to floods is still a quite unexplored field of research. Accurate description of the rainfall governing processes would contribute to the improvement of urban rainwater management, but this information is currently unavailable with the spatial and temporal precision that is needed for urban areas.

Thanks to advanced X-band radars, high-resolution measurements are now available and will be used in the RainGain project to learn more about urban rainfall processes, its causes and its consequences.

The existing methodologies to assess climate impact, the limitations of this methods and the challenges of the research community are presented and discussed in Impacts of Climate Change on Rainfall Extremes and Urban Drainage Systems, a book by by Patrick Willems, Jonas Olsson, Karsten Arnbjerg-Nielsen, Simon Beecham, Assela Pathirana, Ida Bulow Gregersen, Henrik Madsen, Van-Thanh-Van Nguyen (IWA publishing).