Urban flooding has long been a critical issue, particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions of developing countries, where land use changes—especially the conversion of rice paddies into urban areas—have significantly increased flood risks. This study investigated the impact of urbanization on flood risk taking Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a case study. Based on historical flood data, the study identified and analyzed frequent flood–prone areas in Chiang Mai during the period from 1990 to 2018. By integrating the Rainfall–Runoff–Inundation (RRI) model simulation results and the remote sensing data, the research quantified dynamics in flood risk, exposure, and vulnerability across these frequent flood–prone areas. The findings demonstrated that the conversion of high–exposure paddy fields into urban areas markedly elevated area flood risks, primarily due to the reduction in water retention capacity and the inheritance of the high–exposure characteristics of paddy fields. This study highlighted the importance of integrating sustainable urban planning and land management strategies in rapidly urbanizing regions. Furthermore, this study examined the feasibility of adopting flood characteristics quantification in frequent flood–prone areas as a systematic approach to analyze the dynamic interplay between flood risks and urbanization in developing countries.

This study investigated the long-term socio-hydrological resilience of the Chao Phraya River Basin in Thailand by utilizing 76 historical Buddhist temples as materialized archives of ancestral flood awareness. By integrating extensive field surveys which measured architectural parameters, such as total height increase (H1), structural foundation elevation (H2), and overall ground elevation (H3), with Rainfall-Runoff-Inundation (RRI) model simulations, this study established a quantitative baseline for evaluating human-flood interactions across diverse hydrological return periods. The results demonstrated that most historical temples successfully maintained functional resilience during a 20-year return period flood, as their structural elevations effectively prevented water ingress into sacred interior spaces. A significant positive correlation (r ≈ 0.686) was identified between the Exposure Indicator (Indicator E) and the architectural elevation (H1), substantiating that temple designs were deliberately calibrated to local flood characteristics rather than being governed solely by religious or aesthetic traditions. Furthermore, this study identified distinct regional heterogeneity in resilience strategies: downstream cities (Ayutthaya and Chainat) relied on localized structural elevation (H2) to mitigate the prohibitive costs of deep inundation, whereas midstream cities (Sukhothai and Nakhon Sawan) utilized site-wide ground elevation (H3) due to the shallower, widespread flooding characteristic of the region. In the upstream region of Chiang Mai, temples exhibited extreme safety margins in their foundation heights to counteract the high uncertainty and rapid velocity of mountainous flash floods. Ultimately, this study underscored the value of faith-based structures as physical proxies for reconstructing historical human-flood interactions and provided a comprehensive basin-scale perspective on traditional disaster resilience.