SURFACE WATER DRAIN IN URBAN CITIES
ABSTRACT –
Now a days flooding has become a common problem in urban cities in India like Mumbai, Chennai
, Gurugram , Delhi and Kerala and many other ,causing a big disaster to human life . In urban
planning of the cities there is a big problem of surface water drain which includes floods ,
waterlogging , drainage and overflow of the water drain along with waste in the cities . Hence
these floods cause large numbers of damages in every part of country and also increased urban
development’s not providing sufficient drainage is one of the main reason resulting in water
logging in some parts of urban areas . It has been identified that improvement of the drainage
system is one of the highest priority needs of the urban authority for living environment of its
urban population. The urban area suffers from drainage problems and water logging especially
during rainy season creating an unhealthy environmental situation and causes inconvenience to
the residents of the urban including damages to the infrastructure, loss of business and spreading
of diseases, causing damage to people's livelihood and property. And as a part of architecture the
urban planning is not only the construction and organised planning of structures or the
infrastructure , but also the thinking about the surface water drain which should be considered as
a measured part of urban planning.
Research in on the topic of ‘surface water drain in urban cities ’ which includes the reasons
for heavy floods , the issues faced by the city and the recommendations and the conclusions or the
solutions provided.
.BACKGROUND
India is a country where it experiences heavy floods at some regions because of heavy rainfall
having an annual average rainfall of about 300 -650 mm where most of rainfall occurs from the
south-west monsoons . And also India being a second largest densely populated country in the
world experiences a lot of problems in some of the urban cities because of floods where it includes
water logging areas , water pollution along with the improper waste management , traffic
congestions and poor drainage facilities in the planning of the cities.
PURPOSE OF STUDY
The main purpose of this research is to understand the surface water drains problems of urban
cities because of the floods , the reasons of the floods occurring in those areas , and the issues
that are related to waterlogging , water runoff and overflow that is happening in the cities . And
also to know experiences of the city during floods which include the recommendations and
solutions provided or said by experts or the users.
METHODOLOGY
1...Taking into the considerations the two urban developed cities ie Gurugram and Chennai
for the study of surface water drain problems.
2…Documenting the reasons for the floods , waterlogging and overflow of the surface water drains
in the city.
3…Listing down the issues being faced by the cities.
4…And looking up at the recommendations and solutions provided or said by the users or some
experts and getting the inferences.
GURUGRAM:
Reasons for the floods :
1.. Lack of advanced planning in urban planning of the city .
2.. A misdirected approach towards providing solution for badshahpur drain where the width of
45m drain was reduced to 8-10m wide.
3.. And ignorance in the topography of the city as there is mismatched bed level.
4.. De silting has not been done and cleaning of drain have not been done periodically .
5.. And increase in the population along with the urbanization and infrastructure have lead to the
reduction of open and soft landscape surfaces.
6.. Water bodies and lakes in the city have been reduced from 370 acres to 50 acres in which most of
the eater bodies disappeared because NH-8 ( Delhi – Gurugram expressway)
CHENNAI
SOURCE: google
Reasons for the floods :
1.. In 2000, southern Chennai became an information hub where it involved expansion of the city
which covered some agricultural lands , villages and hamlets effecting some ecological and
environmental challenges which the administration department could not tackle it and the
corporation area increased 4 times the original resulting in heavy concretization of the city.
2..The open areas decreased drastically and the built up and paved areas increased from 29.53 % in
1991 to 64.4 % in 2013 due to the concretization.
3..Pallikarni marshland – the water body which drains water from 250 sq km catchment was 50 sq km
water lying area in south of Chennai , now it has get reduced to 4.34 sq km which is less than tenth
of its original size.
4..Two major roads are cutting through pallikarni water body with few pitfully small culverts which have
lots its importance or not in work of transferring the water to the large catchment.
5.. Dumping of the garbage in marshland is also a reason for blockage for the movement of the water.
6..The town planning department gave permissions to build high end apartments , IT parks and some
illegal construction activities near water bodies were some unhealthy decision which completely
clogged the city’s natural drainage system.
7.The Chennai bypass connecting NH45 to NH4 is blocking the east flow drainage causing the flooding
in Anna nagar and some areas behind it.
