Modelling the influence of trees in urban areas as a nature-based solution for increasing urban resilience to pluvial flooding

The goal of the EU CARMINE project (https://carmine-project.eu/index.php/about/) is to help urban and surrounding metropolitan communities to become more climate resilient. The project focuses on heat, wildfires, flooding, pollution and drought and covers eight case study areas distributed across Europe. One such case study covers Birmingham, and the surrounding West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) area in the UK where pluvial flooding, related to extreme precipitation events, has been identified as a high priority climate-related hazard. High-resolution (~2km spatial resolution and hourly temporal resolution) climate/land surface modelling with the Joint UK Land-Environment Simulator (JULES) model is being used to quantify the influence of different scenarios of tree planting (tree density and species) on major climate hazards across the case study area, particularly pluvial flooding and extreme surface heat. JULES outputs are also being used with other relevant data to develop Digital Twin models to enable rapid assessment of pluvial flood and surface heat risks and timely guidance on ‘hot spot’ locations to inform flood and heat mitigation measures implemented by local maintenance teams. We present initial results from the modelling of pluvial flood risk and how this is influenced by different scenarios of tree cover across the area.