Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Land as a sustainable resource in city planning: The use of open spaces

and drainage systems to structure environmental and urban needs
Ianic Bigate Lourenço a, *, Luciana Fernandes Guimara
~es a, Marina Barroso Alves b,
Marcelo Gomes Miguez c
a
Programa de Engenharia Civil/COPPE, Universidade Federal Do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, Av Athos da Silveira Ramos, 149, Centro de Tecnologia - Bloco I, Sala I-
206 e Cidade Universita ria, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, CEP 21941-909, Brazil
b
Escola Polit
ecnica, Universidade Federal Do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ Av. Athos da Silveira Ramos, 149, Centro de Tecnologia - Bloco I, Sala I-206 e Cidade
ria, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, CEP 21941-909, Brazil
Universita
c
Programa de Engenharia Civil/COPPE, Programa de Engenharia Urbana-PEU/Escola Polit ecnica, Programa de Engenharia Ambiental-PEA/Escola Polit ecnica
& Escola de Química, Universidade Federal Do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, Av. Athos da Silveira Ramos, 149, Centro de Tecnologia - Bloco I, Sala I-206 e Cidade
ria, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, CEP 21941-909, Brazil
Universita

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The lack of open spaces in urban areas, associated with degraded river environments aggravates one of
Received 1 December 2019 the main problems faced by cities nowadays: flood risk. This study aims to contribute to the sustainable
Received in revised form management of cities by recognizing land as an important finite resource and emphasizing the impor-
22 June 2020
tance of land use planning in designing resilient cities. The combination of an open space system with
Accepted 27 June 2020
Available online 18 July 2020
urban drainage solutions in multifunctional arrangements can provide a safer setting, better able to
structure urban growth. This discussion is supported by an assessment framework that comprises his-
^ as de
Handling editor: Cecilia Maria Villas Bo torical analysis, mathematical modeling and estimation of the expected annual damage, in a case study
Almeida applied to the Canal do Mangue (Mangue Channel) watershed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Three scenarios
were built to support the analyses. The first scenario refers to the current situation while the second
Keywords: corresponds to an official proposal of the municipal government to mitigate floods. Finally, the third
Urban landscape planning scenario corresponds to a hypothetical alternative historic growth, from the start of the nineteenth
Land use planning century, assuming that urbanization was based on orderly land use planning, driven by the drainage
Sustainable urban drainage
network interacting with the urban open spaces as a planning structure axis. The results indicate that
Multifunctional open spaces
planning land use and urban development in advance while recognizing water dynamics and natural
Flood risk
Expected annual damage limitations, can produce better responses in terms of avoiding flood damages than adopting mitigation
actions after development of water spaces and stressing land resources. The possible structural miti-
gation measures face limited space constraints. Therefore, the actions represented in Scenario 3 can
configure a set of guidelines that can help growing cities to develop more sustainably.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction ecosystem services (European Commission Environment, 2016).

Land resources are the basis for human survival and develop-
ment. Land is a non-renewable resource that provides an important
material foundation and space guarantee for human development
(Sun et al., 2018). It is greatly affected by city growth and conse-
quent human activities, leading to degradation and loss of
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ianicbigate@gmail.com, ianicbigate@coc.ufrj.br (I.B. Lourenço),
lucianafg@poli.ufrj.br (L.F. Guimara~es), alvesmarina@poli.ufrj.br (M.B. Alves),
marcelomiguez@poli.ufrj.br (M.G. Miguez).
More than 75% of the Earth’s land has been impacted by human
development, which imposes an expanding footprint on natural
resources, especially water (Ellis and Ramankutty, 2008). Both
freshwater quality and availability are deteriorating due to popu-
lation growth and changes in standards of living (Marousek et al.,
2019). In more critical situations, land pressures can evolve to a
point where the natural systems are unable to continue supporting
human activities. Therefore, the built environment sheltered in
natural watersheds tends to degrade in a spiral of losses, while rural
areas lose their environmental value.
The challenges faced by the population are the increasing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123096
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
demands on limited and already depleted resources by diverse
actors, land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change, all of
which require a rational approach to resource use that sustains and
enhances productivity and maintains ecosystem resilience (FAO-
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2019).
Land resource planning (also called land-use planning) is a tool for
achieving sustainable and efficient resource use, taking into ac-
count biophysical and socioeconomic dimensions. The purpose of
land resource planning is to support decision-makers and land
users in selecting and putting into practice the uses that best meet
the needs of people while safeguarding natural resources and
ecosystem services for current and future generations. This defi-
nition meets the well-known concept of sustainable development.
Urban areas are key to sustainability, and understanding het-
erogeneity in urban landscapes is important for linking develop-
ment patterns to ecological, economic, and social health (Stokes
and Seto, 2019). While cities concentrate and enhance physical,
intellectual and creative energy, they are harmful to the environ-
ment, to the point of representing a threat to human survival. Thus,
urban agglomerations are recognized more for their conflicts and
problems than for their potentials, and the future of civilization will
be determined by cities and within cities (Rogers, 2001). Harvey
(2008) stressed that the freedom to make and remake cities is
one of the most precious but neglected human rights.
There is increasing demand for settlement areas worldwide in a
trend toward urbanization. As cities expand globally, it is increas-
ingly important to understand how biodiversity is shaped by hu-
man decisions, institutions, and environments, and it is through the
urban biodiversity that the majority of humans experience nature
on a daily basis (Kuras et al., 2020). However, the physical expan-
sion of urban areas lead to lasting impacts on landscapes and
livelihoods, while the proactive management of urban land
expansion is responsible for creating equitable and affordable ur-
ban landscapes (Güneralp et al., 2020). Irregular and/or unplanned
urban occupation degrades land, which is a global issue that re-
ceives much attention currently (Xie et al., 2020). Thus, land use is a
powerful determinant of sustainable cities and can be a strategic
target to protect the environment for future generations (Cox et al.,
2018).
Urban planning has to address many objectives that are often

conflicting. García-Alvarez and Moreno (2018) affirms that in the
last decades, the European Union has developed a set of environ-
mental policies whose main objectives have been to protect natural
capital and to develop a resource-efficient and green economy.
These issues are essential to secure the sustainability in the long-
term. Although green policies have been gradually adopted in
recent years and providing better solutions for urban areas that are
increasing in an unprecedented speed (Xia et al., 2019), they are still
an utmost challenge in urban development.
According to Wu et al. (2020), China suffers from different
overlapping and conflicting plans. To resolve these problems, China
has made serious efforts to explore the methods for coordinating
various planning from theory to practice. The urban sprawl in this
country has resulted in a series of ecological and environmental
problems. Urban planners have been committed to promoting
compact development through high-density and mixed land use.
However, a problem brought by such compact urban form is the
mismatch between physical spaces and socio-economic activities
(Xia et al., 2020).
More recently, the challenges posed by the increasing urbani-
zation have raised societal demands for more efficient and sus-
tainable urban services preserving land resources, which, in a
digital revolution environment, originate and enhance the concept
of the sustainable city (Guedes et al., 2018). In this context, the
concept of “carrying capacity has been widely used in various
disciplines in reference to human-environment sustainability
(Zhou et al., 2019). Economic development cannot exceed the
maximum amount that the environment can support, as well as,
atmospheric environmental policy should be formulated based on
the scientific assessment of regional atmospheric environmental
carrying capacity (Su and Yu, 2020). Ma (2017) explains that the
land carrying capacity is an important measure to evaluate land
resources and to guide regional plans, while promoting sustainable
development. Therefore, this threshold defines the acceptable
limits of human activities, related with population growth, land use
change and physical development.
One of the serious impacts of urbanization is the increase of
flood risks (Vitale et al., 2020), which affects millions of people and
causes substantial economic losses. Failures of urban drainage
systems can cause large losses to people, properties and infra-
structure, affecting public services, aggravating public health
problems, and immobilizing the city, with negative consequences
on the circulation of goods and people. Globally, flooding is the
most prevalent natural hazard faced by cities (Dewan, 2013). The
International Disasters Database (EM-DAT) shows that flooding
caused the majority of natural disasters between 1994 and 2013,
accounting for 43% of all recorded events and affecting nearly 2.5
billion people (Wahlstrom and Guha-Sapir, 2015).
In this context, Debbage and Shepherd (2018) highlight the
overall importance of considering the extent, configuration and
expansion trends of urban development when devising land use
policies in order to reduce runoff generation and flooding. In a
broad sense, urban drainage systems should be integrated with
urban land use planning and urban landscape design (Kozak et al.,
2020) and key lessons for sustainable solutions include the inte-
gration of urban water management and landscape design (Liu
et al., 2019). These are important aims, since floods can be aggra-
vated by urbanization and generate large losses on their way
through the exposed city.
Besides that, Liao et al. (2019) affirm that flood prevention is a
predominant practice in flood hazard mitigation and often carried
out through flood control infrastructure, commonly perceived as a
technical exercise. However, flood prevention can lead to envi-
ronmental injustice since the measures do not eliminate but only
redistribute floodwater, often imposing new flood risks on people
elsewhere. Considering that, these authors (ibid.) argue for a
paradigm shift towards flood adaptation in flood hazard mitigation.
Therefore, one of the great challenges nowadays is to organize ur-
ban expansion in order to minimize flood impacts on both natural
and built environments, by consciously considering and using land
as a resource in a sustainable way.
According to Grizzetti et al. (2016), Europe faces a situation in
which territorial planning for water management is needed, and
the multifunctionality of water systems and the benefits of
approximation with nature are positively recognized. These au-
thors also mentioned that the European Commission (European
Commission Environment, 2016) indicated that natural measures
for water retention could greatly contribute to reduce the negative
effects of floods and droughts, providing ecosystem services in
favor of those aims. Planning in advance and avoiding confronting
nature can be a pathway to more sustainable solutions. However,
nature-based adaptation planning is still a challenging endeavor
that requires transdisciplinary approaches (Wamsler et al., 2019).
Within this framework, proper urban drainage solutions could
be assured by a structured system of landscape planning, where
water would find the necessary storage capacity to reorganize flood
flows. Consequently, the use of a system of multifunctional open
spaces could order land uses and promote the preservation of
environmental attributes. Besides this, by defining land uses and
constructive types according to environmental, social, cultural and
 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
economic specificities, it is possible to adjust (or re-adjust) urban
spaces, seeking a better interaction between local communities and
the natural environment, revitalizing the city and enhancing resi-
dents’ quality of life. This approach seeks to use resources sus-
tainably, by softening human interventions in resource cycles.
Recognizing land as a valuable resource is crucial in order to
reduce the gap between land demand and resource availability,
particularly in the context of global challenges. In this context, this
article addresses the need to promote more sustainable and flood-
resilient cities by recognizing land as a key resource, balancing the
built environment and the natural environment, reducing flood
damage and land degradation. In addition, it aims to increase the
visibility of mutual relations between resource use and social
outcomes, to encourage the exchange of perspectives, experiences
and ideas from research and practices related to sustainable use of
land resources, more specifically the consequences of using land
and related water resources, while helping policymakers to make
more scientific decisions.
From this preliminary discussion, and considering the literature
review, the authors examine the following hypothesis:

It is possible to conduct a process of urban development without
compromising land resources severely regarding hydrological
functions, offering safe spaces for city growth. An alternative
model of urbanization, involving more compact built areas but
offering proper open spaces for preserving natural water dy-
namics, would be able to support urban growth while reducing
flood risks and consequent economic losses.

Assuming this hypothesis, it is proposed a framework that
combines the application of sustainable urban drainage con-
cepts, using urban open space systems to accommodate the
rainwater dynamics in multifunctional arrangements, while
enhancing environmental connections through green infra-
structure. This framework is mathematically modeled and the
losses are computed to support the proposed hypothesis
assessment and validation.
To test this hypothesis, it was established a comparison pro-
cedure using three scenarios for the Canal do Mangue watershed,
located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The comparison among them highlights the importance of
proper planning to recognize the natural aspects of drainage arti-
culated with socio-cultural-economic needs. Mitigating proposals
are able to alleviate problems and threats related to urban floods,
but they cannot solve all the problems, due to limited space in
urban areas, and they also have significant costs. However, when
considering the urban growth within the limits imposed by nature,
there are few negative consequences. The results are valuable to
draw lessons that can be replicated in other developing cities.
2. Background e city growth and water dynamic interactions
The industrialization in the nineteenth century modeled most
cities. This process, with an anthropocentric point of view, was
underpinned by the belief that nature could (and should) be subject
to the needs of economic growth, considering that nature could
indefinitely assimilate the imposed changes. Even today, it is not
unusual to observe land use planning being conducted without
considering the natural dynamics, imposing a rigid grid-like
outline, disregarding the specific natural conditioning features
(Southon et al., 2018). According to Hoyle et al. (2017), there is an
urgent need for greater understanding of the complex relationships
between human aesthetic experience, wellbeing and actual or
perceived biodiversity.
However, by using an ever-increasing database and
3
understanding human “needs” and the relations between humans
and nature, planners, managers and scientists perceived the need
to develop a different approach to manage social-ecological sys-
tems. This new approach aims at better interaction between man
and nature (Patten, 2016). It is necessary to establish a more
harmonious relationship between the natural and built environ-
ments, generating a landscape that is more sensitive to the pres-
ence of nature inside cities.
Therefore, the discussion of sustainable cities and land use
planning is gaining space in the technical and scientific areas.
Xiaoling and Huan (2018) indicated that rational urban develop-
ment can be achieved only with resilience and sustainability. Sus-
tainable and resilient development must include discussions of the
approaches in diversification of Flood Risk Management Strategies.
In most countries, the practical on the ground implementation of
diversified strategies is lagging behind intentions as laid down in
discussions and policy plans, and to enhance societal resilience to
flooding, diversification of flood risk management strategies is both
necessary and important. (Hegger et al., 2018). Holden et al. (2014)
stated that the concepts of sustainable development have been
increasingly reflecting socially desirable attributes of solutions to
local and project-level problems, but ignoring the global challenges
that the concept was meant to address. Besides this, Zaccai (2012)
outlined major evolutions of environmental problems in the
period from the Brundtland Report (1987) to the preparation of the
“Rioþ20” Conference (2012), in an attempt to sketch the limitations
that sustainable development investigation has progressively
revealed. In general, this debate is often highly subjective, so it is
difficult to assess the dimensions of sustainability.
Pioneer works on the sustainability of urban landscaping and
planning tended to propose a static conception, in which sustain-
ability was seen as a durable or stable urban condition, sometimes
treated as a “fail-safe formula”, i.e., a condition that once achieved
could persist (Ahern, 2011). More recently, however, sustainability
has been described as an ongoing process, without any specific
endpoint. Thus, sustainability is a multifaceted objective,
constantly moving ahead, and cities can follow different paths in
the process towards this target (Childers et al., 2014). General
guidelines may be defined to drive this process, but retro-feeding,
reassessing and continuously adapting the system are part of the
sustainability challenge. This approach resembles the resilience
discussion.
Urban resilience, on the other hand, is also a dynamic concept,
depending on the time scale and the systemic adaptability, instead
of a specific one-time adaptation (Meerow et al., 2016). Resilience is
thus classified as an explicitly desirable state, which acts as a
reference to be reached, so it must be negotiated among those that
are involved in (and in the final analysis determine) the state of the
system’s resilience. Sustainability and resilience are related con-
cepts. Aspects like ordering land use and urban occupation, the size
and shape of buildings, population density, infrastructure systems
and systematic arrangement of open and green spaces are funda-
mental aspects that can substantially influence a city’s future result
in terms of sustainability and resilience.
Researchers have started to urge strategies to contain urban
sprawl, based on the idea of a compact city. Compact urban form
has been widely suggested as a more sustainable development
pattern, capable to enhance different aspects of social livability
such as social exchange, collective interaction, and outdoor activity,
using a high-density, mixed-use city with clear (i.e. non-sprawling)
boundaries. The ‘compact city’ has been one of the most prominent
concepts that emerged in the global urban policy debate; however,
it is difficult to ascertain to what extent its theorized positive
outcomes can be substantiated by evidence (Ahlfeldt and
Pietrostefani, 2017). . There are different physical forms and
4 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
cultural contexts to consider and trade-offs to be made (Orum and
Jenks, 2020). Some findings challenge part of dominant assump-
tions attributed to the compact urban form orthodoxy: a compact
neighborhood can be perceived as safe, offer acceptable home and
neighborhood satisfaction, and, at the same time, suffer from low
social networking and community engagement (Shirazi, 2020).
To support a promotion of social networking and community
engagement, in addition to provide a better quality of life, multi-
functional green public spaces well planned and easy to access
should be proposed. Beyond that, some authors argue that the
expansion of green infrastructure (GI) is the best strategy for
enhancing the sustainability and resilience of cities. Green infra-
structure has the potential to provide multiple ecosystem services
to benefit the urban population (du Toit et al., 2018), and are
increasingly linked to urban water management (Liu and Jensen,
2018).
Green spaces if properly planned can provide several benefits,
offering important services, such as environmental protection,
leisure and recreation (Bell et al., 2017), and reducing impervi-
ousness, while open spaces, in general, can provide room to store
rainwater (Miguez et al., 2018). Besides that, urban green spaces are
associated with various well-being aspects (Coldwell and Evans,
2018) as an important part of sustainable, healthy and socially
equal urban environment. Urban planning and green space man-
agement benefit from information about green space use and
values, but such data are often scarce and laborious to collect
(Heikinheimo et al., 2020).
Flooding problems are directly related to water space allocation
in cities. This aspect points to the conception of a system of open
spaces to guide land use planning and favor the maintenance of
environmental services associated with natural hydrological func-
tions (Bertilsson et al., 2018). More sensitive ecological approaches
have appeared in recent years, encouraging flood hazard mitigation
by working with nature (Barbedo et al., 2014), reordering spaces
and consequently flood flow patterns. According to Schuch et al.
(2017) planning of green open spaces in particular can play an
important role in water resources management, as they support
important ecosystem services, including those that assist in flood
management.
Therefore, the drainage system can occupy a key position in the
spatial analysis, acting at the interface between the natural de-
mands, while providing passage to rainwater, and the built envi-
ronment’s needs, related to providing safe places for city activities.
In this context, solutions to the drainage system respond to urban
demands for sanitation, within the carrying capacity of the water-
shed, but should also consider the use of the spaces necessary to
recompose the water cycle functions. To minimize the conflicting
demands, multifunctional spaces can optimize the landscape
design. The idea that multifunctional open spaces can support
sustainable urban development has been widely accepted in theory
and intensively used in practice of urban planning and design. It is
based on the assumption that multifunctional spaces bring a wider
spectrum of environmental, social and economic benefits to urban
areas (Zivkovic et al., 2019).
Sustainable urban drainage measures introduce opportunities
for multifunctionality in the urban environment, providing not only
the support to avoid undesired floods, but also fostering ecosystem
benefits, such as microclimate regulation, leisure, erosion control
and habitat provision (La €hde et al., 2019). Therefore, the drainage
system can be seen as a catalyst for this change, when flood miti-
gation is needed, or a driver for ordering urban spaces, when
working to prevent flood risks. This second role should take place
before urban growth, within the urban planning process.
3. Materials and methods
The method developed in this study comprises two parallel
paths. First, considering the hypothesis stated and the supporting
literature review, a set of basic guidelines are established to drive
urban growth planning, ordering land use to save adequate spaces
to accommodate water dynamics, while incorporating natural
needs in the city routine. On the other hand, following the parallel
path to support the proposed guidelines, a case study is carried out
to prove their efficacy. The case study is based on the current
flooding situation of a consolidated urban watershed. This situation
is taken as reference for comparisons. Then, two additional sce-
narios are simulated: (i) a implementation of a mitigation project to
reduce current flooding consequences; and (ii) a hypothetical sce-
nario to represent an alternative reality, where, going back to a past
reference, the city is envisioned as having developed according to
the proposed guidelines. This third scenario is compared with the
current situation and with the mitigation proposal. All the simu-
lations are performed with the aid of a hydrodynamic model and
the flood damages are assessed in all situations. If the third scenario
is able to keep the city safe from flooding and from consequent
losses, the hypothesis will be confirmed and the proposed guide-
lines can be used to support urban planning in growing cities.
The method is structured in five steps, as shown in Fig. 1 and
described in more detail in the next paragraphs.
3.1. Step 1. Flood planning
3.1.1. Definition of basic guidelines
The following guidelines are basic recommendations for urban
planning proposals, in order to balance urban and environmental
needs and contribute to more resilient and sustainable cities:

The lowlands and the valley bottoms should not be occupied;

Flood plains should be preserved;

New developments should avoid urban sprawl, optimizing
infrastructure systems, but respecting the carrying capacity of
the watershed;

The hydrological modifications in the water cycle, mainly
referring to loss of infiltration and retention, should be
compensated using on-site retention and infiltration measures,
on the local scale, and search for storage opportunities in the
open space system, at the watershed scale;

Fluvial parks can compose a multifunctional green infrastruc-
ture system, offering storage volume, environmental connec-
tions, leisure, wildlife habitat, etc.
3.2. Step 2. Problematization
The construction of Scenario 1 is based on a diagnosis of the
current situation, which allows identifying conflicts and potential
for development of the watershed. Scenario 1 is the base scenario
for analysis.
Scenario 1 (C1) - Current situation
The main aspects to be observed are:

Historical background e identification of historical facts
fostering urban changes, correlating the flooding events with
the hydraulic works and urban sprawl aspects;

Environmental aspects e observation of the main biophysical
aspects, including vegetation, hydrography and terrain eleva-
tion; and

Urban aspects e analysis of urban densities, open space avail-
ability and flooding patterns.
 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
Fig. 1. Methodological flowchart.
This scenario represents the current flooding situation and the
impacts caused by urban expansion according to current city
patterns.
Finally, a compilation of the gathered information is done,
identifying the main problems and potentialities associated with
the current watershed situation.
3.3. Step 3. Alternatives
3.3.1. Scenario construction
From the analysis of the current situation characterized in Sce-
nario 1, two additional scenarios are built, representing a mitiga-
tion alternative and a (hypothetical) development alternative.
Scenario 2 (C2) e Public policies for urban water management
The second scenario refers to implementation of the municipal
government’s plan for managing rainwater, called the Stormwater
Management Master Plan of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro
(PDMAP in the Portuguese abbreviation). This scenario represents
the solution effectively proposed and implemented in an initial
phase by managers in 2013. Objectively, this is what was possible to
do, in face of the past uncontrolled urban growth. The PDMAP
prioritizes the use of large underground reservoirs to temporarily
store floodwaters.
Scenario 3 (C3) - Hypothetical alternative growth
Starting from the early nineteenth century, when the Portu-
guese royal family arrived in Brazil during the Napoleonic Wars,
this scenario assumes that urbanization could have been based on
ordered land use planning, driven by drainage restrictions. The
drainage system would be able to interact with the open space
system and act as an urban structuring axis. It characterizes a hy-
pothetical situation that presents planned urban growth as a so-
lution to avoid flood risk.
This hypothetical growth considers that the city has reached the
same total population and territorial extension as today, as well as
the same urban development milestones (port facilities, main
roads, centralities etc.). The expected result is that the adoption of
planning measures through the sustainable management of urban
growth, using the guidelines proposed in Step 1, brings huge ben-
efits, more efficient than mitigation measures.
3.4. Step 4. Evaluation
3.4.1. Hydrodynamic modeling
The mathematical hydrodynamic model chosen to represent the
proposed scenarios is particularly useful in urban environments
without detailed topographic data. The hydrodynamic model called
Urban Flow-Cell Model-MODCEL (Miguez and Vero l, 2017)
5
simulates the physical situation through a set of flow cells, which
are homogeneous compartments able to represent average char-
acteristics of the urban surfaces and structures, to store water and
to communicate with other cells through hydraulic links,
composing an active flow network of ponds and flood paths.
Therefore, MODCEL is able to describe natural or artificial water-
courses, elements of the urban fabric (streets, squares, roofs, etc.),
the flow in the storm drains, and the mutual interactions.
MODCEL is considered a quasi-2D model, since it represents the
two-dimensional characteristics of the watershed, but only uses
traditional 1D hydraulic equations.
The modeling phase was performed for the three proposed
scenarios in order to obtain flood maps and compare the im-
provements obtained from each proposal in relation to the current
situation. More information about the modeling phase is presented
in Annex 1.
3.4.2. Economic losses
A key performance measure for urban drainage management is
the estimation of the reduction of flood risks (Delelegn et al., 2011).
This can be done by calculating the expected annual damage (EAD),
which is done by integrating the flood risk density curve over all
probabilities (Olsen et al., 2015). Since it is not feasible to simulate
the damages of all possible events, there are different approaches to
simplify and estimate the EAD. The numerical integration method
is one of these procedures and is widely accepted in the literature
(e.g., Tariq, 2013; Yu et al., 2013; Hellmers et al., 2018).
In the numerical integration method, the EAD can be calculated
by multiplying the mean damage by the increase in the probability
of exceedance, according to Equations (1)e(3):
DPi ¼ jPi  Pi1 j (1)
DPi1 þ DPi
Di ¼ (2)
2
X
m
EAD ¼ Di  DPi (3)
i¼1
where:
DPi ¼ damages due to the flood event i;
Pi ¼ probability of occurrence of event i in a year.
3.5. Step 5. Proposals
The main goal of this work is to establish conceptual guidelines
6 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
for planning and to propose sustainable design alternatives capable
of controlling floods, improving environment quality and revital-
izing urban spaces.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Problematization
4.1.1. Scenario (C1) e current situation
The Canal do Mangue watershed is located in the metropolitan
region of the city of Rio de Janeiro, in southeastern Brazil, as shown
in Fig. 2. It is an emblematic area of the city, presenting charac-
teristics of consolidated urban growth, where part of its develop-
ment was marked by informal settlements. It has natural fragilities,
marked by lowlands and landfills over wetlands, implemented
according to unsustainable parameters. The watershed area suffers
from frequent floods, affecting a large number of people and
generating significant and recurring economic losses.
The Canal do Mangue watershed contains landfilled areas
reclaimed from Guanabara Bay and original wetlands; irregularly
occupied areas on hillsides and along river banks; and canalization
and rectification of rivers, among other features, which combined
with a natural condition of foothill-coastal plains has made it prone
to flooding. The urban expansion, without proper land use guide-
lines, contributed to the current critical risk situation.
According to the Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat of the Envi-
ronment and Sustainable Development (SEMADS - Secretaria de
Estado de Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Sustenta vel, 2001),
after the diversion of the Joana River to the Maracan~ a River, aiming
to concentrate the local drainage network into the Mangue Channel
outlet, severe floods started to occur more often, also aggravated by
urban occupation of the tributary basins.
Besides this, irregular housing in the higher watershed areas
favored soil erosion and deposition of solid waste and sediments in
the lowland channels. This is an ongoing process, dating from the
start of the twentieth century, which intensified in the 1960s. The
local public infrastructure and services were insufficient to meet
the demands of urban growth.
Fig. 2. Canal do Mangue watershed.
4.1.1.1. Aspects of urban evolution. The periods of large hydraulic
interventions in the watershed are collated with the flood events
and increase of population in the form of a timeline (Fig. 3).
This timeline shows that the occurrence of floods in the
watershed increased proportionally to the population growth. It
also shows that the drainage projects implemented between 1850
and 1950 entirely channelized the rivers of the watershed, but they
were not enough to solve the flood problems. In the past 60 years, a
larger number of severe floods occurred. The demographic pres-
sures, forcing the occupation of unsuitable areas involving the
suppression of natural ecosystems, were preponderant for the
present high-risk situation.
4.1.1.2. Canal do mangue diagnosis. This section provides informa-
tion about the current diagnosis of the Canal do Mangue watershed
so that it can support the flood mitigation proposals. Table 1, for
instance, presents a summary of the main environmental aspects of
the basin.
Important urban aspects are highlighted in Table 2.
Finally, Table 3 presents a summary of the diagnosis phase,
indicating the main potentials and problems/conflicts of the Canal
do Mangue watershed.
4.2. Alternatives
4.2.1. Scenario 2 (C2) e public policies for urban water
management
4.2.1.1. Stormwater Management Master Plan of the Municipality of
Rio de Janeiro (PDMAP). As stated before, Scenario 2 involves one of
the most important studies developed by the municipal govern-
ment to mitigate flood problems in the Canal do Mangue water-
shed. The PDMAP proposal (depicted in Fig. 4) envisions
introducing four large reservoirs along the Joana and Trapicheiros
rivers, plus diversion of the Maracana~ River into the Joana River and
subsequent diversion of the latter into Guanabara Bay. The reser-
voirs along the Joana River would hold volumes of 143,000 m3 and
50,000 m3, and reduce the peak flow of a 25-year event by
approximately 50% and 67%, respectively. The reservoirs along the
 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096 7

Fig. 3. Timeline. Source: adapted from MAPLU/FINEP/UFRJ (2015).

Table 1
Description of environmental aspects.

VEGETATION Vegetation is basically concentrated on the slopes and is under pressure from urban growth. At present, there are two main conservation units, one under
state auspices (Grajaú Park) and the other federal (Tijuca Forest National Park).

DRAINAGE The Canal do Mangue watershed is mainly a wetland region that drains the water from an area of around 43 km2, with five main rivers: Maracana ~, Joana,
Trapicheiro, Comprido and Papa-Couve. The wetlands originally functioned as a natural filter and a buffer to the water from these rivers.
Now, all the rivers in the basin are totally or partially channelized and degraded in the urban area, and their environmental value is generally unknown to
society.
TERRAIN It has the form of an amphitheater, with two structures: the hillsides and rocky formations of the Tijuca Massif, and the central plains. The lowest points
receive the confluence of the water that descends from the hillsides. The urban development reaches an elevation of 50 m, with most part of it occurring up
to 25 m. This is the region naturally most subject to flooding.

Table 2
Description of urban aspects.

POPULATION The areas of greatest density are mainly in the central region of the watershed. However, it has heterogeneous typological characteristics, with some
DENSITY dense districts, like Tijuca, and others more sparsely populated, like Grajaú.

PUBLIC OPEN The watershed has some important public open spaces, such as Quinta da Boa Vista Park, Trovador Park and some small public squares distributed
SPACES throughout the basin. It also has two conservation units: Tijuca Forest National Park and Grajaú Park.
FLOODING The watershed frequently suffers serious flooding problems.
8 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

Table 3
Potentials and problems - diagnosis of the current scenario.

Main Problems Environmental Vegetation Vegetation removal mainly due to irregular urban expansion.
and Conflicts Degradation
Water Resources Pollution: trash disposal and release of raw sewage; traditional drainage interventions; superficial and
underground river canalization; devaluation by the population.

Inefficient Recurring floods, disordered occupation; lack of connections between open spaces; sidewalks and paths with problems of size and
Infrastructure conservation; mobility flaws, with local streets receiving heavy traffic.

Main Potentials Environmental Vegetation Large vegetated areas; history of reforestation in the region; environmental protection areas.
Hydrographic Rivers and streams with underused ecological and recreational potentials.
Network
Urban Open Spaces e Public open spaces e squares and parks.
good supply Private open spaces e parking lots, among others.
History Strong historical identity.

Trapicheiros River would contain smaller volumes of 70,000 m3
and 18,000 m3, due to limited urban spaces. The former would
reduce the peak flow of a 25-year event by approximately 36%,
while the latter would have no impact on the hydrodynamics of the
river, offering its storage volume to the local minor drainage sys-
tem, in the most critical area of the basin. The plan would promote a
large reduction of the flood heights of this critical region (around
Praça da Bandeira). The diversion of the Maracan~ a River would have
a significant impact on the reduction of its outflow. The peak of the
diverted flow would exceed 50 m3/s, reducing the peak flow of the
Maracana ~ River by 72%. Finally, the diversion of the Joana River to
Guanabara Bay is one of the most important interventions planned
for the watershed, with a significant impact on the hydraulics of the
whole system. This “new” outfall, in fact, would restore the original
situation, when the Joana River discharged directly into Guanabara
Bay.
4.2.2. Scenario 3 (C3) - hypothetical scenario
The hypothetical scenario of ordered urban growth states that it
is possible to conduct a process of urban development without
compromising natural needs regarding hydrological functions, of-
fering safe spaces for city growth in a sustained land use scenario.
The lessons learned from this case study can be conceptually
generalized for the planning of cities still in the initial urbanization
phase.
4.2.2.1. Urban evolution and historical maps. The city of Rio de
Janeiro became the seat of the Portuguese Empire in the early
eighteenth century, starting a period of substantial changes in its
urban patterns. Between the end of the nineteenth century and the
start of the twentieth century, after the proclamation of Brazil as a
republic (1889), the urbanization process of the Canal do Mangue
region became more intense.
From this period, we found two reference maps, besides two
figures that show the natural conditions (Fig. 5a) contrasting with
present conditions (Fig. 5d). The first map, in Fig. 5b, dates from
1877 and shows the natural courses of the rivers. The second, dated
from 1911 (Fig. 5c), depicts the final course of the Canal do Mangue

Fig. 4. PDMAP proposal.

 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
already implemented and the courses of its tributaries with the
downstream stretches modified.
The construction of the hypothetical scenario (C3) was carried
out through a critical review of the available information, involving
the following procedures:

Compilation of:
o historical data and maps of the city of Rio de Janeiro dating
from the early 1800s, focusing on identifying the original
hydrography and dating the main hydraulic works in the
watershed;
o key elements of the city’s identity, regarding its current
infrastructure, assuming maintenance of the current Port of
Rio de Janeiro, the main railway lines and highways, as well as
the historical buildings;

Based on the minimum recommended constraints given by the
Brazilian environmental legislation (Brasil, 2012), the original
watercourses and adjacent floodplains were preserved by defi-
nition for laying out green floodable parks and pathways (of-
fering adequate storage capacity to prevent floods), and
interconnecting environmental spots.

Socioeconomic and demographic data were gathered and
analyzed according to the Brazilian official census conducted by
the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2010).

Open spaces were identified and spatialized using Google Earth
and GIS tools for configuring the open space system according to
the guidelines established in Step 1. After configuring the open
space system, the same population found today was redis-
tributed in the remaining space, increasing the built density of
the remnant areas, defining more compact built-up spaces.

All these data were used to construct the mathematical model of
scenario 3.
Based on those procedures, the hypothetical scenario can be
visually summarized in Fig. 6.
Fig. 5. (a) Canal do Mangue Region: Natural condition. (b and c) Historical maps from
1808 to 1911. (d) Canal do Mangue Region: Present condition. Sources: (a and d) http://
portalgeo.rio.rj.gov.br/EOUrbana. (b) http://www.arquivonacional.gov.br/br/. (c) http://
objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_cartografia/cart170649/cart170649.
jpgConsulted: June 2020.
9
4.3. Evaluation
4.3.1. Hydrodynamic mathematical modeling
The hydrodynamic modeling provides the flood depths over the
watershed surface, which can be compared in order to evaluate the
improvements obtained with each proposal in relation to the cur-
rent situation. The events with return period equal to 1, 2, 5, 10, 25,
50, 100 and 500 years were simulated, and to illustrate these re-
sults, Fig. 7 presents the flood heights for a 25-year event. It is
noteworthy that C3 has significantly better results than C2 when
compared to the current situation (C1). With this visual analysis, it
is already possible to observe the potential of planning measures in
comparison with the flood mitigation actions. After disordered
urbanization occurs, few open spaces remain, limiting the imple-
mentation and performance of structural interventions. Neverthe-
less, a quantitative evaluation is important to corroborate the
analysis of the flood maps, which leads to the next step.
The modeling of scenarios C1 and C2 were originally developed
and previously presented in Rezende (2018), Rezende et al. (2019),
Rezende et al. (2019b) and Rezende et al. (2019c). Scenario C3 was
defined and completely developed for this study, based on the
historical survey and the design exercise of a more compact city
following the proposed methodological guidelines of Step 1. In all
these scenarios, major drainage was modeled jointly with the
fluvial network and watershed surfaces. Minor drainage was not
included in these simulations.
It is important to note that there are always limitations in any
mathematical modeling process. In the particular approach of this
work, the mathematical model used has the advantage to using
fewer data, but it highly depends on the physical interpretation of
the urban watershed and its interactions with the fluvial and
drainage systems to work properly. Because MODCEL has an
interpretative phase, when the available data are analyzed and
translated to the mathematical format, it is important to under-
stand how the watershed works. If this phase is not properly con-
ducted, results can be mistaken. However, when using comparative
scenarios, the relative results can communicate the message with
minor doubts.
An important aspect in the mathematical modeling of the cur-
rent situation refers to the choice of only using major drainage data,
due to the maintenance gap observed in the minor drainage
network. The model was calibrated and it is representative of the
current situation (C1). However, scenarios C2 and C3 may show
residual (probably non-existing) flooding at low water depths.
Since micro-drainage may fail in more extreme events (the ones
that threaten the major drainage network), the modeling approach
is close to reality regarding flood peaks, but may be exaggerated in
places where low water depths were calculated.
4.3.2. Economic losses
Damage estimation was performed using an adaptation and
update of the study conducted by Nagem (2008), who plotted
depth-damage curves for a region of the metropolitan area of Rio de
Janeiro based on the earlier work of Salgado (1995). In this analysis,
only damage to residential properties (building structures and
contents) were considered. Since the main focus of this work in not
on damage evaluation, details about the method are not presented
here. More information can be found in Guimara ~es and Miguez
(2020).
Using the damage evaluation results, it is possible to estimate
the expected annual damage, using Equations (1)e(3). The results
of the EAD calculation of the different scenarios are presented in
Table 4. The estimated value of the current situation demonstrates
the criticality of the flood problem in the Canal do Mangue
watershed. With the works proposed by the municipal government
10 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

Fig. 6. Overview of the system of open spaces.

Fig. 7. Flood heights for a 25-year event.

 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096 11

Table 4 the systemic recognition of physical, historical, social and envi-

EAD estimation for the case study scenarios. ronmental relationships. This is a general contribution to urban
SCENARIO EAD (thousand US$) planning in developing cities.
C1 e Current situation 36,601.00
C2 e PDMAP proposal 20,172.00 6. Conclusions
C3 e Planning situation 182.00

Sustainable and resilient urban development depends on

(C2), the damage reduction would be significant (almost 45%),
although the EAD value would remain high. In contrast, the hypo-
thetical scenario (C3) presents a much lower residual risk, with an
EAD reduction of around 99.5% when compared to C1. These results
demonstrate the importance of land use planning and the feasi-
bility of the proposed planning guidelines.
5. Summary of flood-resilient planning guidelines
As a practical result, the hypothesis formulated in the beginning
of this work was confirmed. Complementarily, it is possible to
highlight the following recommendations:

Flood flows need space (and storage volumes), which can be
associated with the urban open space system, especially in
multifunctional parks and green areas.

Preserving the bottom valleys and immediate riverine areas
from occupation is one of the easiest ways to avoid negative
urban flooding consequences and damages, by not exposing the
population to a natural (potentially hazardous) process.

Compact cities can be useful in providing urban solutions for
sustainable challenges, but open spaces should be included in
landscape planning and assume multifunctional roles, imper-
viousness rates should be controlled, and the carrying capacity
of the watershed should be respected.
Table 5 formalizes and summarizes the main findings.
The purpose of this study is to support sustainable management
of cities. In view of its complexity, this study was structured in an
interdisciplinary way, incorporating aspects of urbanism, land-
scaping and engineering, aiming to give responses to flood risks
and flood resilience. This approach made it possible to assess the
impacts of current urbanization and the impact of mitigation ac-
tions proposed by the government in comparison with a hypo-
thetical scenario of sustainable urban growth that would have been
possible if carried out in advance. As a product, a set of flood-
resilient planning guidelines is presented, aiming at urban and
environmental qualification in the urban growth process, based on
adequately planning and ordering the territory to mitigate the
impact of human interventions on land resources. The open spaces
system is a crucial resource in this discussion, and urban drainage
can act jointly with these open spaces, structuring urban growth
towards flood resistance and resilience, supporting compact cities
aligned with the natural carrying capacity of the watershed. The
drainage system intermediates natural demands for conveying
rainwater as well as preserves the urban environment from flood-
ing and consequent damages.
This discussion was validated by the application of a framework
combining hydrodynamic mathematical modeling and systemic
analysis of flood damages. This framework considered the current
diagnosis of a floodable urban watershed as a starting point. Unlike
usual approaches, which often only seek to compare mitigation
actions in different future scenarios in order to choose the best
configuration within the urban constraints, this work tried to look
to the past and assess how the city could have evolved if adequately
driven through a planning process oriented to ordered land use,
while considering the watershed’s natural limits and the water
dynamics.
Therefore, the choice to go back to the past was intentionally
defined, considering that the comparison of a present (critical and
well-known) situation with an alternative (hypothetical) non-
flooding situation would cause a greater impact than just projec-
ting a future modified situation.
A case study was developed in the Canal do Mangue watershed,
considering the current situation, the future situation with the
implementation of a municipal mitigation project (usual approach)
and an alternative and hypothetical current situation, sustainably
evolving from a past city reference. These hypothetical scenario
results showed that the proposed alternative historical evolution of
the Canal do Mangue urban development could have led to an
almost flood-free situation in the present, with expected annual
damage reduced to less than 1% when compared to the real current
situation.
Therefore, with the method developed in this work, it was
possible to prove that adequate guidelines for urban growth can
avoid urban flooding problems and provide a more sustainable
urban growth pathway. In addition, the set of guidelines proposed

Table 5
Land use planning guidelines for flood resilient cities.

Environmental protection and enhancement Preserving existing key environmental areas and restoring hydrological functions is crucial to support resilient cities. The
preservation of riparian areas and the provision of floodable areas are basic elements in designing a more balanced urban
landscape and reducing the risk of flooding. When acting in advance, these are simple and low-cost measures.

Urban environmental connections
Sustainable urban drainage
Design of the open space system observing
water dynamic aspects
Multifunctionality of open spaces
Population density
The urban planning directives should promote restoration of the riverine vegetation and conservation of public green
areas, enhancing environmental connections. New forms of urban settlement and building patterns should be conceived
to respect the water cycle.
Sustainable urban drainage requires solutions integrated with urban growth, creating conditions to revitalize the urban
landscape and to recover natural environmental values. River restoration concepts should be incorporated in this
discussion.
The land uses should be based on the conception of a system of multifunctional open spaces, in line with landscape
planning that recognizes that urban drainage systems can assume a structuring role in the development process.
The open space system should be based on the idea of multifunctionality, achieved through landscaping actions. This
multifunctionality should encompass aspects of urban infrastructure, naturalness, leisure and well-being.
Starting from definition of the areas that should remain open, the other areas are ordered to receive the expected
population.
This involves working with the concept of densification, typical of compact cities, but not exceeding the carrying capacity
of the environment.
12 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096
can provide environmentally oriented urban planning, which can
be used by developing cities to sustain flood resilient results.
In the next stages of this research, we expect to develop another
scenario, (C4), which will represent an alternative mitigation pro-
posal for the current situation (C1), introducing (as far as possible)
the proposed guidelines in the design process to mitigate the cur-
rent problems of an already consolidated urban watershed. In this
new scenario, the flood-resilient planning guidelines will be
adapted, trying to improve the results obtained in scenario (C2),
which was able to reduce, but not to solve, urban flooding in the
watershed. More attention will also be paid to the minor drainage
modeling and to on-source control measures to reduce runoff
generation. This kind of measure is related with minor drainage
scale.
Promoting sustainable urbanization is one of the main chal-
lenges facing urban planners and policymakers at present. In light
of this concern, the main theoretical gains presented by the hy-
pothesis tested here and the consequent proposed premises can be
applied in developing cities as a tool to support the process of land
use planning, with the inclusion of an integrated system of multi-
functional open spaces to achieve a flood resilient and functional
city.
Sample credit author statement
Ianic Bigate Lourenço: Conceptualization, Methodology, Project
administration, Supervision, Writing - Original Draft, Writing -
Review & Editing, Visualization.
Marcelo Gomes Miguez: Conceptualization, Methodology,
Project administration, Supervision, Writing - Review & Editing.
Luciana Fernandes Guimara ~es: Formal analysis, Resources,
Writing - Review & Editing, mathematical Modeling review, esti-
mation of the expected annual damage.
Marina Barroso Alves: Formal analysis, Resources, mathematical
Modeling.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided
by the Coordenaça ~o de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Su-
perior- Brasil (CAPES) [Finance Code 001], the Conselho Nacional de
Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnolo gico (CNPq) and the Fundaça~o
Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a  Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de
Janeiro (FAPERJ).
A. ANNEX 1. e URBAN FLOW CELL MODEL
The Urban Flow-Cell Model e MODCEL is a hydrological-
hydrodynamic model proposed to represent a complex flow
network, with a set of relatively simple information, using average
values to represent urban landscape through the flow-cell concept
l, 2017). MODCEL is a quasi-
(Zanobetti et al., 1970; Miguez and Vero
2D model, since it represents the two-dimensional characteristics
of the watershed while using only 1D equations. However, MODCEL
also represents the storm drains and connect them with superficial
flows and open channels.
Topographic and hydraulic representations of are two funda-
mental components in MODCEL. The physical interpretation pre-
cedes the computation and this information is within the
responsibility of the modeler. Therefore, the task to interpret
terrain features and understand how the real system works and
how can each component be represented to simulate system
functioning is a prerequisite of this kind of modeling concept. In a
first moment, on the one hand, this feature can be seen as a weak
point, since the preliminary interpretation can affect results. On the
other hand, however, this process allows the modeler to under-
standing the watershed functioning. In this way, this turns into a
practical strength.
Different patterns may be constructed and pre-defined in
MODCEL, accounting for different characteristics of neighborhoods
in the urban tissue, like, for example, different runoff coefficients,
the presence of structures on the floodway (like walls or even
buildings), and different sidewalks and building levels, which can
influence storage availability. For the Canal do Mangue watershed,
it was considered that sidewalks are 0.15 m above the street level,
and building, 0.50 m above this same reference (two stair steps over
sidewalks).
In this model, the entire watershed and its different elements
are represented by a combination of cells types and cell links. The
cells act as the storage elements of the model, representing terrain
elevation and land occupation characteristics, while the links
activate the flows between each pair of cells.
For the current situation (C1) of the Canal do Mangue water-
shed, there are 1035 cells in the model. Scenario 2 (C2) e Public
policies for urban water management e has 1073 cells, since it
includes the proposed interventions of the PDMAP (Stormwater
Management Master Plan of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro). On
the other hand, Scenario 3 (C3) e the Hypothetical scenario e has
811 cells due to the incorporation of the new planning proposals.
The cell types used in each scenario are presented in Figure A-1. It is
important to highlight that all models have river/channel cells.
However, these are more evident in Scenario 3, since the planning
measures consider a preservation area along the river, without
burying them below the streets.
Cells are arranged in a topological scheme, which is numerically
solved by a double sweep method. In MODCEL, a cell can only be
hydraulically linked to its immediate adjacent neighbors, which
means that a cell located in the topology line “n”, for instance, can
only be linked to other cells located in the topology “n-1”, “n” or
“nþ1”. Figure A-2 exemplifies the topological organization of the
model for the current situation (C1). For the other scenarios, the
topology is similar with the inclusion and/or exclusion of some
cells.
The mass balance is applied to all cells, which means that, at
each step, the stored amount of water in one cell depends on the
discharges exchanged between this cell and its neighbors, as well as
on the rainfall contribution added through a rainfall run-off
transformation. Therefore, the rainfall distribution and the run-off
values are important inputs to the model. For all scenarios simu-
lated, the same rainfall distribution was considered and it is rep-
resented in Figure A-3. The run-off coefficients of urban areas, as
presented in Figure A-4, are quite similar in the scenarios, consid-
ering that the proposals maintain the same population with similar
urban occupation rate in the region. However, white spots can be
seen more evident in the Scenario C3, since river/channel cells are
not considered in this representation.
I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096 13

Fig. A1. Cell types in each scenario.

14 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

Fig. A2. Topology scheme represented as a map.

 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096 15

Fig. A3. Rainfall distribution related with 6 different Rainfall Gauges.

16 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

Fig. A4. Run-off coefficients.

 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096 17

The discharge link between cells can be expressed through
known hydraulic laws, enabling the introduction of different
mathematical relations to properly represent the system func-
tioning (to a certain extent). The types of links considered in the
current situation of Canal do Mangue watershed are river/channel
link, surface flow link, storm drain link, entrance and outfall links,
broad crested weir link, flap gate link, inlet link and pumping link.
Details about link types and their equations can be found in Miguez
and Verol (2017).
Finally, MODCEL allows to obtain the flood heights in each cell at
each simulated time step, as well as the flow exchanged between
each two linked cells. Figure A-5 presents the maximum flood
height in each cell of the modeled scenarios considering a 25-year
event, which refers to the return period defined for major drainage
projects in Brazil.

Fig. A5. Flood heights for a 25-year event.

18 I.B. Lourenço et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 276 (2020) 123096

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