Thiruvananthapuram: The draft Master 2040 plan for Trivandrum was prepared by the City Department and Planning State had proposed the adoption of the city sponge concept in the city as part of overcoming urban floods.
The proposal has been debated under the section devoted to disaster management in the city.
The city concept of Sponge, which uses natural ways to absorb storm water and slow down water flow, successfully used by China in urban flood risk management.
Design of retention lake retention design, retention tank, eco-river channel, rain garden, porous sidewalk and green roof as the main component of the city of sponge.
Bio-Swales which are the channels intended to manage Stormwater runoff when filtering debris have also been proposed in the design of the master plan that will soon be served on the Board.
The city whose flood witnesses in the main areas during the shower are expected to get from the implementation of the city sponge concept.
Wing City Planning has prepared flood reports in 2018.
Spatial assessment was conducted to analyze, how far the factors such as proximity to the water body, existing drainage patterns and topographic affected the impact of floods in all districts.
Also the percentage of the sink area and distribution of land use is calculated to come to conclusions for the reasons and intensity of the flood.
In the flood report, the sink area which is a topographic lying area comes from the digital elevation model data (DEM) available for the district.
The flood area in the sink area emphasized the need for building regulations near and for the conservation area, the report noted.
The distribution of the sink area to total land area in each local flood body is also taken as part of the report.
At City Corporation, the 24% area of ​​the sink of the total land area recorded by floods.
Furthermore, the study showed that a considerable percentage of default areas was flooded during 2018 and this showed the need to implement regulations for building construction in the riverbank area.
The distribution of land use from the flood area in the city in 2018 shows that 50.82% of the areas built and 17.9% of agricultural land were flooded.
The flood area when compared to city junior high school shows that the majority of flood areas fall within the green strip area, which are proposed for conservation, mostly along the water bodies such as caramana, river lightning and Pattom, Ullour and Amayizhanjan Thodu.
According to an article published in the MDPI Journal, the general purpose of this concept requires “restoring” the capacity of the city to absorb, infiltrate, save, purify, drain, and manage rainwater and “set up as many water cycles as possible to mimic the natural hydrological cycle.
A` Sponge City ‘is a city that has the capacity to mainstream urban flood risk management into its urban planning policies and design.
A sponge city will not only be able to deal with `too much water, but also reuse rainwater to help reduce the impact of” drought “.
Some of the anticipated benefits of a sponge city as mentioned in the article included reducing economic losses (due to floods) and increased city livabilities.