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Assessment of long-term flood resilience in the Chao Phraya River Basin through historical temple architecture
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DOI：10.3389/frwa.2026.1842862.png)
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Abstract
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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.
Keywords:
resilience
socio-hydrology
Chao Phraya river basin
human-flood relationship
temple
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