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Eliminating poverty and improving welfare are the value pursuit of global development. Based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2010 to 2020, the path relationship among urban shrinkage, urban–rural development, and residents' welfare growth is empirically tested. The heterogeneity of urban shrinkage affecting residents' welfare are further revealed from multidimensional perspectives such as public financial pressure, attention to ageing cause, provincial capital welfare spillover, land expansion, and geographic differences. The research shows that: (1) Urban shrinkage not only directly inhibit residents' welfare, but also curb the improvement of residents' welfare through widening urban–rural income gap and strengthening urban–rural dual economic structure. (2) The higher the public financial pressure and the attention to the aging cause, the more obvious the inhibitory effect of urban shrinkage on the welfare. The welfare spillover of provincial capital cities show a distinct characteristics of distance attenuation. (3) The inhibitory effect of urban shrinkage on welfare growth is stronger in cities with a higher degree of land expansion. The inhibitory effect of the widening urban–rural income gap on welfare growth presents a V-shaped trend with land expansion. (4) The overall impact of urban shrinkage, urban–rural income gap, and urban–rural dual economic structure on residents' welfare is negative, and the spatiotemporal heterogeneity is significant. The impact of urban shrinkage on residents' welfare in seven cities of Hebei and Shandong province is at the stage of turning from negative to positive during the study period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change and rapid urbanization have caused increases in urban floods. Urban flood risk assessment is a vital method for preventing and controlling such disasters. This paper takes the central region of Cangzhou city in Hebei Province as an example. Detailed topographical information, such as the buildings and roads in the study area, was extracted from GF-2 data. By coupling the two models, the SWMM and MIKE21, the spatial distribution of the inundation region, and the water depth in the study area under different return periods, were simulated in detail. The results showed that, for the different return periods, the inundation region was generally consistent. However, there was a large increase in the mean inundation depth within a 10-to-30-year return period, and the increase in the maximum inundation depth and inundation area remained steady. The comprehensive runoff coefficient in all of the scenarios exceeded 0.8, indicating that the drainage system in the study area is insufficient and has a higher flood risk. The flood risk of the study area was evaluated based on the damage curve, which was obtained from field investigations. The results demonstrate that the loss per unit area was less than CNY 250/m2 in each return period in the majority of the damaged areas. Additionally, the total loss was mainly influenced by the damaged area, but, in commercial areas, the total loss was highly sensitive to the inundation depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]