Rainfall Pressure, Stormwater Pipe Network Scale, and Urban Flood Disaster Occurrence in Guangdong Province

Abstract

Urban flood resilience depends not only on the scale of infrastructure investment, but also on whether such investment can be translated into observable flood-mitigation outcomes. Focusing on the transformation from infrastructure response to flood outcomes, this study uses panel data for 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province from 2016 to 2022. Annual maximum monthly precipitation is used to represent rainfall pressure, stormwater pipe density to represent infrastructure scale, and the number of reported flood events to represent the outcome variable. A two-way fixed-effects Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) model is employed. The results show that, in the full sample, rainfall pressure is positively, but not significantly, associated with reported flood occurrence, while stormwater pipe density does not exhibit a stable negative moderating effect. The main conclusion remains broadly unchanged when alternative outcome and precipitation indicators are used, when pipe density is lagged by one period, and when a conservative sample is adopted. Extended analysis provides only limited weak negative evidence for Pearl River Delta cities, and this evidence is not robust across alternative specifications. The findings indicate that pipe length per unit of built-up area primarily reflects the scale of infrastructure provision and cannot be directly equated with the operational performance of the drainage system. By separating response inputs from outcome performance, this study reveals the conditional nature of the transformation from infrastructure scale to operational performance in urban flood resilience research and provides empirical support for a shift from infrastructure expansion toward performance-oriented and integrated governance in high-density coastal cities.