Abstract
There is a significant difference between the measures taken by urban flooding control department for flooding and waterlogging in urban areas. However, there is no clear definition method for flooding and waterlogging, and it is difficult to characterise flood and waterlogging in cities by quantitative means. The aim of this paper is to analyse the difference between flood and waterlogging and their potential relationship, and to propose a flood and waterlogging identification method based on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. By extracting the dynamic attributes of flooding and waterlogging, the quantitative identification of both is achieved using fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, and empirical analyses are carried out using the Zhongyuan and Erqi districts of Zhengzhou City as case studies. Differential analyses show that flooding is mainly caused by the entry of foreign water bodies, while waterlogging is caused by excessive local precipitation leading to waterlogging, and the two are transformed into each other and superimposed under extreme conditions, resulting in a complex disaster for the city. The results of the identification for flooding and waterlogging in the study area indicated that the overall hazard of waterlogging is greater within the city limits, but the impact of localised flooding cannot be ignored. Especially in densely populated areas with low topography, flooding and waterlogging and their superimposed effects combine to increase the risk of flooding and the difficulty of disaster response.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. E-Mail: [liujh@iwhr.com](mailto: liujh@iwhr.com).
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Funding
This research was funded by the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation, grant number 8242003; Supported by the Open Research Fund of Key Laboratory of River Basin Digital Twinning of Ministry of Water Resources, grant number. Z0202042022; Supported by the Chinese National Key Research and Development Program, grant number. 2022YFC3090600; Supported by Open Research Fund Program of State key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering grant number sklhse-2024-C-03;supported by major projects of the natural science foundation of China, grant number 52192671.
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Conceptualization, J.Z. and J.L.; methodology, J.Z. and W.D.; software, and validation, Y.P. and H.W.; resources, J.W. and J.L.; data curation, W.D. and M.K.; writing, J.Z. and W.D.;review and editing, J.Z. and W.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Zhou, J., Du, W., Liu, J. et al. Identifying and analysing the differences between flooding and waterlogging in urban areas. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35296-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-35296-w
