Chapter 2 Developing Strategies for Mitigating Pluvial Flooding in Gurugram Abhilash Rawat,M. P. Govind, Jawale Madhuri Vasudev, and Preetam Karmakar 2.1 Introduction Urban flooding is one of the growing concerns of the governments world wide. In future, it is estimated to increase both in frequency and magnitude. Floods have caused havoc because of inadequate town planning without following the principles of sustainability. Even though the drainage systems are designed for a long design period of 25–30 years, it tends to fail miserably even when the incident rainfall is within the expected limits. Some of the causes of urban flooding are as follows: (1) uneven distribution of rainfall along with rapid urbanization, (2) encroachments on stormwater drains, natural drainage channels, and water bodies, (3) incomplete stormwater drainage network, and (4) improper maintenance of stormwater drainage system. Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata are the prime examples where flooding usually takes place. It is observed that many modern builders violate the law and do not follow the norms. The illegal land reclamation of urban water bodies for new construction in these cities is very wide spread. For instance, in Calcutta (Kolkata), the location of Lake Town is very bad w.r.t. floods and it had suffered heavy floods in 1999. The floods were not only observed in 1999 but also with less severity in 1970, 1978, and 1984 (Applo study center 2017). All of these cities grew by leaps and bounds; lack of affordable housing sites has pushed people to any land typically those located on natural drainage channels, water bodies, and flood plains. The settlements thus formed grew and eventually became legalized due to political considerations. Examples are the settlements along Yamuna, Hooghly, and Mithi river flood plains and the drainage channels leading to these. Area under agricultural land use, within the peri-urban areas, which acts as the flood buffer, is also shrinking at a very fast A. Rawat (B ) · M. P. Govind · J. M. Vasudev · P. Karmakar Department of Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, Neelbad Road, Near IISER Institute, Bhauri, Bhopal, MP, India e-mail: rawatabhilash91@gmail.com © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Pandey et al. (eds.), Hydrological Extremes, Water Science and Technology Library 97, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59148-9_2 19