Reframing urban flood resilience through blue green infrastructure- an integrated cluster analysis and DPSIR approach in the case of Kerala, India

Urban flooding, intensified by climate change is predominantly addressed through end-stage interventions, necessitating large-scale investments in passive solutions. Proactive approaches, such as blue-green infrastructure (BGI) and the urban ecological attributes of flood resilience, are often overlooked. Characterizing the spatial distribution of ecological determinants is crucial for understanding the cause-effect relationships in pluvial flood resilience. Clustering methods are valuable for simplifying complex datasets by revealing underlying patterns. This study applied a robust and transposable cluster analysis to classify urban areas based on the ecological determinants of flood resilience in the Indian city of Kochi coupled with the Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework to allow evidence-based flood planning. The study is carried out in five steps, (i) variable identification, (ii) clustering procedure, (iii) deciding the number of clusters, (iv)cluster profiling and interpretation and (v) DPSIR framework. Results revealed that pluvial flood resilience can be assessed based on the ecological attributes of an area, and a high correlation between landuse characteristics and flood resilience. Three distinctive clusters were identified using a hierarchical clustering algorithm: low, medium, and high-resilient clusters. This study presents a novel approach to urban flood resilience interventions by addressing the factors causing pluvial flooding thereby supporting evidence-based interventions in BGI spatial planning.