Abstract
Over the past decades, the rate and intensities of natural hazards have increased significantly, attributed to the impacts of climate change. Simultaneously, the population living in urban areas has increased rapidly, converting cities into vibrant economic hubs. However, this rapid expansion led to ill-planned developments, which are expensive to maintain, let alone to enhance. The emergence of unprecedented challenges accompanied by climate change has paved the way for a resilience-oriented design approach. Resilience thinking focuses on reducing the impact and streamlining the recovery process. This paper aims to address the impacts of climate change on the transportation network through flooding. We conducted the study using a graph-theoretic approach based on betweenness centrality as a metric to assess several flooding scenarios. The results show extensive damage to the network in all scenarios, which is expected considering rain and storms unusual to the region in the records used as a reference during the development. This study highlights the need to re-evaluate stormwater management plans urgently and take all the necessary mitigation measures to improve the resilience of the Doha highways network, which is crucial for the FIFA World Cup 2022 which will be held during the winter season.
Keywords
Climate change resilience
Middle East
Resilience qualities
Urban built environment
Urban resilience