The city of Wuhan in Central China has been one of the most severely affected urban areas since rain storms started to hit the province of Hubei last month.
Although the local government started to carry out measures to prevent such disasters three years ago, they are still facing many challenges now.
Wuhan has been implementing measures to prevent intense flooding since 2013. One of these is to enlarge some local lakes, so they can absorb excess water from the city when heavy rains hits.
"So concentrated heavy rains will not accumulate in the area or even cause flooding in the short term," said Wu Xinmu, Wuhan University.
Wuhan is located at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han rivers. Its underground water level is higher than other cities in northern China, so it's more likely to succumb to flooding. And this has created many problems for the city planners. To resolve this, Wuhan has planned to construct a deep tunnel drainage system.
"The advantage of a deep tunnel drainage system is that it provides a channel to regulate and store water. And the storage capacity is quite large," said Chen Xiongzhi, deputy chief engineer of Wuhan Planning & Design Institute.
The city has spent four billion yuan on more than 170 drainage programs over the past three years. A total of 13 billion yuan is available to complete the project. But when heavy rains pounded Hubei province earlier this summer, the city's streets flooded again.
One university student raised a question regarding the drainage system. After three years of treatment, where has the money been invested.
Wuhan officials responded that although waterlogging problems have been resolved in some old areas of the city, there are still some difficulties. The program is still underway and it is estimated that the major projects will be finished by the end of 2018. Urban waterlogging problems will be further alleviated then.
