Abstract:In Japan, floods occur frequently in urban areas because non-infiltrating areas are seeing increased urbanization. To prevent floods, urban basins must improve the infiltration capacity and water retention of the whole basin. There are several basic technologies for river basin management, such as infiltration trenches or rainwater storage. However, a method of soil amendment that prevents flood disasters has not been established. This study aims to evaluate the infiltration capacity of soil amendments using bamboo charcoal and humus. A constant-head infiltration test and rainfall simulation were conducted to evaluate the properties of the soil amendments. The constant-head infiltration test's results showed that soils mixed with 30% humus had the greatest potential for influencing initial and final infiltration rates, and the more the mixing rates of bamboo charcoal and humus were increased, the higher the water retention capacity. The results of the rainfall simulation showed that soils mixed with 30% humus had the highest final infiltration rates and lowest multiplication spillage. To reduce the runoff volume using soil amendment technology, it is important to delay overland flow, and the hydraulic properties of the soils mixed with bamboo charcoal and humus were as effective as those of granite soils.

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To mitigate urban flooding, conserving pervious areas and securing the infiltration capacity are important. The infiltration capacity of an area can be significantly reduced by compaction; thus, we attempted to build a runoff reduction technology that can ensure the infiltration capacity even after compaction to mitigate urban flooding.Herein, we revealed the relationship between the degree of compaction and infiltration capacity of amended soils using humus and bamboo chips. We performed a watering infiltration experiment, which initially demonstrated the nonoccurrence of surface runoff in all experimental materials for rainfall intensities of 60 and 120 mm hr −1 , without compaction. However, as the degree of compaction increased, humus mixed with soil exhibited behaviour similar to that of unimproved soil and the surface runoff exceeded seepage drainage. In contrast, in the case of bamboo chips mixed with soil, the surface runoff remained small even at high degrees of compaction. Consequently, when the rainfall intensity was 120 mm hr −1 and compaction was 3 kg cm −2 , the surface runoff per unit time for bamboo chips mixed with soil was 2.4 times less than that for humus mixed with soil and 2.2 times less than that for unimproved soil. Moreover, such differences were observed in the infiltration capacity with respect to compaction because of the void structure owing to soil improvement. Thus, we conclude that soil improvement using bamboo chips can be considered an effective technology to mitigate urban flooding.