Grounded Resilience
a Rainwater Simulation Framework for Improving Building Flood Resilience through Blue-Green Infrastructure Design Strategies
Vadya Dzauqiah (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Bianchi – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
D. Cannatella – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
H.A. van Bennekom – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
As populations continue to grow, cities also continue to densify and expand. In this process, natural surfaces are increasingly replaced by impervious surfaces, which reduce the ability of rainwater to infiltrate into the ground. This increases pluvial flood risk and shows the need to rethink how urban areas are built. One way to do this is by making room for more natural areas within the urban fabric. However, in dense cities where space is limited, these areas also need to perform multiple functions. Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) offers this form of spatial adaptation by combining rainwater regulation with other urban benefits. While some BGI strategies are applied at the building scale, this research focuses on ground-based BGI adaptation: strategies applied to open spaces and ground surfaces at the urban scale.
Ground-based BGI adaptation is often evaluated through its ability to reduce flood hazard in general. However, when adaptation resources and available urban space are limited, it becomes important to ask where adaptation can create the most meaningful improvement. This is why a more targeted receptor-based perspective is needed. Among the many urban receptors affected by flooding, this research focuses on buildings and examines how building flood-resilience improvement can be understood through an urban adaptation lens.
Drawing on the idea of ‘Grounded Resilience’, the study explores how building flood-resilience assessment can be used to ground the spatial design of ground-based BGI adaptation strategies. To achieve this, the research develops a Grasshopper-based simulation workflow that integrates rainwater simulation, BGI design evaluation, and building-level resilience assessment based on building attribute data. This enables area-level evaluation based on data-driven differences between buildings within a single design environment.
The workflow is tested in the Lijnbaan area in Rotterdam. The results show that the workflow enables the comparison of ground-based BGI adaptation scenarios through indicators including absorbed runoff volume, changes in flood depth, differences in building resilience scores, and runoff path visualisation. By linking site runoff behaviour with building resilience outcomes, the workflow supports early-stage design decision-making by helping designers identify where ground-based BGI adaptation can deliver the greatest local resilience improvements and where adaptation efforts should be prioritised.
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