On 10 May 2016, Guangdong Province, China, suffered a heavy rainstorm. This rainstorm flooded the whole city of Guangzhou. More than 100,000 people were affected by the flooding, in which eight people lost their lives. Subway stations, cars, and buses were submerged. In order to analyse the influential factors of this flooding, topographical characteristics were mapped using Digital Elevation Model (DEM) by the Geographical Information System (GIS) and meteorological conditions were statistically summarised at both the whole city level and the district level. To analyse the relationship between flood risk and urbanization, GIS was also adopted to map the effect of the subway system using the Multiple Buffer operator over the flooding distribution area. Based on the analyses, one of the significant influential factors of flooding was identified as the urbanization degree, e.g., construction of a subway system, which forms along flood-prone areas. The total economic loss due to flooding in city centers with high urbanization has become very serious. Based on the analyses, the traditional standard of severity of flooding hazards (rainfall intensity grade) was modified. Rainfall intensity for severity flooding was decreased from 50 mm to 30 mm in urbanized city centers. In order to protect cities from flooding, a “Sponge City” planning approach is recommended to increase the temporary water storage capacity during heavy rainstorms. In addition, for future city management, the combined use of GIS and Building Information Modelling (BIM) is recommended to evaluate flooding hazards.

Continuous Global Positioning System (GPS) monitoring is essential for establishing the rate and pattern of superficial movements of landslides. This study demonstrates a technique which uses a stand-alone GPS station to conduct millimeter-accuracy landslide monitoring. The Precise Point Positioning with Single Receiver Phase Ambiguity (PPP-SRPA) resolution employed by the GIPSY/OASIS software package (V6.1.2) was applied in this study. Two-years of continuous GPS data collected at a creeping landslide were used to evaluate the accuracy of the PPP-SRPA solutions. The criterion for accuracy was the root-mean-square (RMS) of residuals of the PPP-SRPA solutions with respect to “true” landslide displacements over the two-year period. RMS is often regarded as repeatability or precision in GPS literature. However, when contrasted with a known ”true” position or displacement it could be termed RMS accuracy or simply accuracy. This study indicated that the PPP-SRPA resolution can provide an accuracy of 2 to 3 mm horizontally and 8 mm vertically for 24-hour sessions with few outliers (< 1%) in the Puerto Rico region. Horizontal accuracy below 5 mm can be stably achieved with 4-hour or longer sessions if avoiding the collection of data during extreme weather conditions. Vertical accuracy below 10 mm can be achieved with 8-hour or longer sessions. This study indicates that the PPP-SRPA resolution is competitive with the conventional carrier-phase double-difference network resolution for static (longer than 4 hours) landslide monitoring while maintaining many advantages. It is evident that the PPP-SRPA method would become an attractive alternative to the conventional carrier-phase double-difference method for landslide monitoring, notably in remote areas or developing countries.

The South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) is a multi-decadal infrastructure project in China aimed at alleviating severe water shortages in north China. It has imposed broad social, economic, environmental, and ecological impacts since 2015, particularly in the Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan area. Sentinel-1A/B Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) (2014–2021), Global Positioning System (GPS) (2010–2021), and hydraulic-head data are used to assess the impacts on ongoing land subsidence in Tianjin in this study. Additionally, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed to highlight primary factors controlling the recent land subsidence. Our results show that the reduced groundwater pumping has slowed down the overall subsidence since 2019 due to SNWD. As of 2021, the subsiding area (>5 mm/year) has reduced to about 5400 km², approximately 85% of the subsiding area before SNWD; the areas of rapid subsidence (>30 mm/year) and extremely rapid subsidence (>50 mm/year) have reduced to 1300 km² and 280 km², respectively, approximately 70% and 60% of the areas before SNWD. Recent subsidence (2016–2021) was primarily contributed by the inelastic compaction of clays in deep aquifers of Aquifers III and IV ranging from approximately 200 to 450 m below the land surface. The ongoing rapid subsidence (>30 mm/year) in Tianjin is limited to border areas adjacent to large industrial cities (e.g., Langfang, Tanshan, Cangzhou) in Hebei Province. Ongoing subsidence will cease when hydraulic heads in the deep Aquifers (IV and V) recover to the new pre-consolidation head, approximately 45 m below the land surface, and subsidence will not be reinitiated as long as the hydraulic heads remain above the new pre-consolidation head. This study reveals the importance of coordinating groundwater and surface water uses at local, regional, and national scales for land subsidence mitigation.