Prospects of eco-hydrological model for sponge city construction

ABSTRACT Introduction Understanding complex urban eco-hydrological processes through models is an important approach in sponge city construction. However, the research on this has not kept pace with the urgent need for sustainable development of urban water resources, which makes the current construction efficiencies unsatisfactory. Outcomes This review highlights the importance of establishing a multi-scale urban distributed eco-hydrological model by analyzing the connotations of sponge city construction. Hydrological models that can be configured for sponge city construction were selected. Traditional models have limitations in coupling ecological and hydrological processes, multi-scale and landscape-based simulations, refined simulations, and computational efficiency. By contrast, cellular automaton has a discrete data structure in space, time, and states, is capable of bottom-up computing, and provides a new conceptual framework for simulating complex urban eco-hydrological processes. Discussion and Conclusion Future model development may focus on the conduction of multi-scale simulation systems, the simulation of coupled urban eco-hydrological processes, the quantification of eco-hydrological responses to land cover composition, spatial configuration and low impact development practices, and improving simulation accuracy.