Adequacy assessment of an urban drainage system considering future land use and climate change scenario

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, has been experiencing severe water-logging and urban flooding in the last few decades. In this paper, we estimate the peak storm runoff of Hatirjheel-Begunbari canal – the largest drainage system of the city – under different operational, land use and climate scenarios (2013, 2025 and 2040). Our method includes digital elevation model (DEM) reconditioning, watershed delineation, and development of future land use scenario. We apply HEC-RAS to check the adequacy of Begunbari canal cross-sections to carry peak runoff for the scenarios considered here. The Hatirjheel-Begunbari system is found to drain stormwater from ∼25% of the city. Within the system, built-up areas are increasing linearly by 0.8 Km2/year, whereas water body and wetlands are decreasing exponentially, which might increase the runoff coefficient by 11% in 2040 relative to 2013. Climate-induced change in rainfall intensity along with land-use change show three times higher runoff in 2040 than in 2013. Around 58% of canal cross-sections appear to be overflown at both banks while carrying a 5-year return period peak runoff under the 2013 scenario. For future scenarios, all sections seem to cause an overflow, which is alarming.