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Lookup NU author(s): Ambreen Masud, Dr Maria-Valasia PeppaORCiD, Professor Jon MillsORCiD, Dr Cat ButtonORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Urban hydrological models are critical for flood risk management. However, the availability of high-resolution topographic data for reliable outputs remains challenging in data-scarce cities. Therefore, determining data quality in producing reliable information is fundamental. We evaluated open-source and proprietary topographic data for use in the two-dimensional hydrological model City Catchment Analysis Tool (CityCAT). We modelled 12 scenarios using combinations of open-source and light detection and ranging (LiDAR)-generated datasets, validating the results with community-generated flood risk maps. The findings show high agreement with scenarios using LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEMs) (bootstrapped Spearman’s ρ ≈ 0.90). However, open-source building footprints performed better, demonstrating that both are necessary for reliable urban flood risk mapping. As LiDAR is costly with limited access, we urge for publicly available high-resolution datasets for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) disproportionately impacted by climate change. Therefore, we address this gap by focusing on a Latin American context with Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) as a case study.
Author(s): Masud A, Peppa MV, Solano-Correa YT, Mills JP, Button C
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Geocarto International
Year: 2026
Volume: 41
Issue: 1
Online publication date: 31/05/2026
Acceptance date: 21/05/2026
Date deposited: 15/06/2026
ISSN (print): 1010-6049
ISSN (electronic): 1752-0762
Publisher: Taylor and Francis Ltd.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2026.2681279
DOI: 10.1080/10106049.2026.2681279
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available upon request from the corresponding author. However, the LiDAR data is not publicly available due to commercial restrictions
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