Establishment of Resilient Infrastructures for the Mitigation of an Urban Water Problem: 1. Robustness Assessment of Structural Alternatives for the Problem of Urban Floods

: Current cities encounter various types of water problems due to rapid urbanization and climate change. The increasing significance of urban water problems calls for the establishment of resilient alternatives to prevent and minimize social loss that results from these phenomena. As a background research for establishing resilient infrastructures for the mitigation of urban water problems, we evaluated the robustness of structural alternatives for urban flood as a representative case. Combining the robustness index (RI) and the cost index (CI), we suggested the robustness-cost index (RCI) as an indicator of the robustness of structural alternatives, and applied the index to assess the existing infrastructures and structural alternatives (i.e., sewer network expansion, additional storage tank construction, and green roof construction) at a site prone to floods located around Gangnam-station, Seoul, Korea. At a rainfall intensity frequency range of 2 to 20 years, the usage of a storage tank and a green roof showed relatively high RCI value, with a variation of an alternative showing greater RCI between the two depending on the size of design rainfall. For a rainfall intensity frequency of 30 years, installing a storage tank with some green roofing was the most resilient alternative based on the RCI value. We proposed strategies for establishing resilient infrastructures for the mitigation of urban floods by evaluating the robustness of existing infrastructures and selecting optimal structural alternatives with the consideration of scales of design disaster.