Resilience of drain system facing floods: a case study in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, México

Abstract

Floods are one of the effects of hurricanes that have been more evident on coastal areas causing human deaths and economical loss. This tests the response capacity of drain system infrastructure. The objective of this research was to determine resilience of drain system infrastructure facing floods, produced by hurricanes, in the city of Chetumal,  Quintana Roo, México. Five components were considered, each one with a variable number of indicators, which are shown in parenthesis: sturdiness (8), redundancy (7), resources (2), speed (2) and adaptive capacity (13). Each value was standardized, then weighted through experts’ enquiry and finally resilience rate was defined, 0.2982 was found for the city of Chetumal. This demonstrates a low rate for resilience, which was mainly associated to resources and redundancy components. Based on this, both components should be strengthened in order to increase resilience rate stressing normative and territorial planning instruments application, emergency plans in case of floods, maintenance service plans of drain system infrastructure as well as investment in prevention programs.