Flood Intrusion into Buildings: Experimental and Numerical Advances in Hydrodynamic Modelling, Damage Assessment, and Urban Flood Risk Management

Urban flooding is one of the most frequent and economically damaging natural hazards worldwide. With rapid urbanisation, growing exposure of assets in flood-prone areas, and increasing rainfall intensities driven by climate change, the accurate assessment of flood impacts in cities has become a critical challenge. Numerical hydrodynamic models are the primary tool for flood hazard analysis and risk management, yet they frequently oversimplify the interaction between floodwaters and urban structures. In particular, the mechanisms governing floodwater intrusion into buildings through doors, windows, and other façade openings remain poorly understood and are rarely accounted for in operational models. This gap leads to systematic unrealistic estimation of tangible and intangible flood damage, compromising the reliability of risk maps, adaptation strategies, and insurance loss estimates.

A key unresolved problem in urban flood risk assessment is the quantification of flow exchange between flooded streets and building interiors. Current 2D shallow-water models either treat buildings as impermeable obstacles or apply coarse porosity parameters, neglecting the hydraulic processes that determine indoor water depth — a critical variable for damage estimation. Bridging this gap requires advances on several fronts: experimental characterization of discharge coefficients for typical building openings (doors, shutters, roller blinds) under a range of flow conditions; development of conceptual and numerical models that couple street-level hydrodynamics with building-scale intrusion processes; and integration of the resulting flow-intrusion functions into damage models and depth-damage curves calibrated for urban building typologies. Addressing these challenges will substantially reduce uncertainty in flood loss projections and improve the operational value of urban flood models for emergency planning, land-use management, and climate adaptation.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions that advance the understanding and modelling of floodwater intrusion into buildings and its consequences for urban flood damage assessment. Specific themes of interest include: experimental studies on flow exchange at building façades and openings; development or validation of discharge coefficients and parametric intrusion models; integration of building-scale flow processes into 2D or 3D hydrodynamic models; porosity-based approaches for urban flood simulation; construction and application of flood depth-damage curves for building contents and structure; case studies combining hydraulic modelling with damage assessment, including climate change scenarios; and uncertainty analysis in urban flood loss estimation. Both experimental and numerical contributions are equally welcome, as well as works combining physical laboratory approaches with computational modelling. Contributions may take the form of original research articles, methods papers, or systematic reviews.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

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Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Urban Flood Modelling, Flood Intrusion Into Buildings, Discharge Coefficient, Flood Damage Assessment, Flood-Depth-Damage Curves, Urban Hydrodynamics, Street-Building Flow Exchange, Flood Resilience

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.