The role of urban forests in compound urban crises: focusing on floods, air pollution, and human thermal comfort

The crisis in cities with high vulnerability are interlinked and cannot be addressed in isolation. The consideration of integrated approach to disaster management is essential to urban for resilience. This study aims to investigate the role of urban forests on reducing any potential risks from compound disasters in urban areas, represented by floods, air pollution, and human thermal comfort. At first, types of urban forests are investigated in a perspective of nature-based solutions (NbS) with various design criteria appropriate for urban rivers, potentially threatened by river flooding. Here, different kinds of scenarios are considered to figure out optimal design conditions as one of mitigating measures for individual disaster in urban areas adjacent to the river. From comparative analysis on hydrodynamic modelling with microclimate analysis and prediction, this study also evaluates main differences of changes in critical indicators for compound urban crises, such as water level, runoff, PM10, predicted mean vote (PMV), etc. Finally, it suggests how to maximize major functions of urban forests in the multi-criteria decision making context, towards a greener and more resilient city.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (2020R1G1A1013624) and in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. NRF-2022R1A4A3032838).