Increase of Flood Risk due to Urbanisation: A Canadian Example

There has been increasing concern among the government officials who deal with emergency preparedness and natural disasters that increasing urbanisation is enhancing the risk from river flooding in urban areas. This study concerns such a risk for the City of London in the province of Ontario in Canada. It has been shown that between 1974 and 2000 there has been a considerably elevated risk from floods due to heavy urbanisation in the watershed of the Upper Thames River, of which the City of London is a part. Databases were prepared making use of satellite remote sensing technology on landuse classification and this information was integrated with meteorological and hydrological data records and analysed to obtain a quantitative estimate of the potential risk from river floods to London.