While inadequate drainage systems are considered to be the main cause of China's urban flooding problem, many experts said the chaos caused by flooding has been further exacerbated by flaws in public transportation and municipal facility management.
"Some of the problems may also be chalked up to an eagerness to rigidly conform to prearranged disaster plans, which are not always suitable in light of the unpredictable nature of these types of emergencies," said Zhu Lijia, a professor at the National Academy of Governance.
"Planning is not always the solution. Dealing with emergencies requires wisdom and flexibility, not just falling in line with a prearranged plan," Zhu said.
Yang Hongshan, Deputy Director of the Department of Urban Planning and Management of the School of Public Administration of Renmin University of China, believes the havoc wreaked by the flooding in Beijing on June 23 was the result of the inaccurate judgment of preexisting weather data and poor coordination among different government agencies.
"The city's 'nerve system' is not sensitive enough, and the measures put into place are not proper," he said.
In fact, in terms of emergency response and public management, Beijing is considered to be relatively strong in comparison to other Chinese cities.
The city did manage to release several emergency alerts during the rainstorm, and authorities dispatched thousands of police officers to handle traffic and begin drainage and repair work on flooded subway lines.
Mao Qizhi, a professor at the Department of Urban Planning and Design of Tsinghua University's School of Architecture, said cities across China had to upgrade their emergency response systems as a result of their rapid growth and development.
Capturing the rainwater
On June 28, less than a week after the heavy rain overwhelmed Beijing, the government launched a campaign to inspect the illegal usage of the city's drainage system.
The main task of the campaign is to find out what human activities are contributing to inefficient drainage. The illegal covering of drainage outlets and the destruction of drainage facilities are thought to have significantly weakened the city's drainage system.
According to the Beijing Water Authority, about 80 percent of drainage system users are actually using drainage infrastructure illegally, allowing polluted water to freely flow into the system.
"The dumping of polluted water could badly affect a city's drainage system and cause pollution problems," said Ma Jun, Director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Beijing-based NGO.
In spite of rising complaints about the city's drainage system, Yu Kongjian, Dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture of Peking University, said that drainage was not essential to the problem.
"It's time for city planners to start paying attention to collecting rainwater," he said.
As urbanization speeds up, both the numbers of people and buildings in Beijing and other Chinese cities have increased dramatically in recent years. With more bitumen-covered roads and cemented ground surfaces, most of the rain falling on these cities runs directly into rivers and then flows into the sea.
"For a dry city like Beijing, it would be a waste of fresh water if we drained all the water out," Yu said.
With its rapidly rising population, Beijing is under enormous pressure to meet its residents' demands for fresh water. To solve the problem, the Central Government has planned to invest more than 250 billion yuan ($38.65 billion) in building the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, which will bring water from the Yangtze River to Beijing and other northern cities in 2013.
"Rainwater harvesting could ease the pressure on the Yangtze water diversion project, and avoid many environmental problems that such large-scale projects possibly cause," Yu said.
Rainwater is a valuable natural resources, which can be collected in catchments and treated for different uses, especially in areas that have few sources of good-quality groundwater or surface water.
"This waste of precious fresh water can be prevented if Beijing collects rainwater by building catchments," said Yu.
He suggests expanding the extent of permeable ground coverage within the city, which would involve expanding the city's green belts.
By collecting rainwater, the local government could create an alternative source of water to meet the demands of cities at a much lower cost than other projects.
According to Yin Zhi, Vice Dean of the School of Architecture of Tsinghua University, rainwater collection is a practice followed in many parts of the world.
Singapore, for instance, cannot source its water from rivers or lakes but it always has adequate water to meet the needs of its people. Rainwater is one of the city-state's major source of water, which accounts for 47 percent of its available fresh water.
"The governments of Chinese cities need to spend more on infrastructure to improve their water conservation and rainwater recycling capabilities," Yin said.
