Assessing Urban Policy Adaptations to Pluvial Flooding and Stormwater Management under Climate Change

Abstract

Increasing frequencies of heavy rainfall events in urban areas threaten to disrupt urban systems causing political, economic, social and environmental loses and damages. While cities make stormwater adaptation decisions, little is known if these decisions follow a similar pattern so that an adaptation framework can be developed to help cities facing similar stormwater adaptations in the future. The thesis is structed in three chapters based on three published articles. The first chapter explores the existing state of stormwater adaptations and the existing policy frameworks to make these decisions in six global and developed cities. The second chapter develops a combined Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to analyze the opinions towards stormwater management from select stakeholders with interest in the decision-making process. The third and final chapter uses the AHP-TOPSIS methodology to evaluate the opinions around stormwater management amongst the stakeholders in the six cities to identify if a decision hierarchy exists.