A basin-level analysis of flood risk in urban and periurban areas: A case study in the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Flooding in urban and periurban areas is a complex phenomenon that results from the interplay between urban expansion and the dynamics of the hydrological system. Understanding both processes is essential to manage flood risk. This study aimed to analyze the flood risk in urban and periurban areas of the upper and middle basin of the Luján River (Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires, Argentina) between 1985 and 2015. We assessed the factors that affect flood frequency by analyzing the precipitation variations obtained from meteorological data and applying hydrological models. We also used supervised classification of remote sensing imagery to detect increases in impervious surface areas that could enhance flooding. Furthermore, we combined both analyses to identify flood risk situations in the region. Our results indicated that maximum precipitation and hydrometric values remained stable during the study period, with a marked interannual variability due to the presence of dry and wet phases. During the dry phase (2011–2015), when flooding events were infrequent, there was a steady urban sprawl in the floodplain area and, as a result, more people would have subsequently become exposed to flood risk. Our results evidence the lack of regional policies to regulate the urban sprawl in flood risk regions.