Abstract
Stormwater management is a key issue in line with global problems of urbanization and climate change. Assessing the effectiveness in managing stormwater is crucial to maintain urban resilience to flooding risk. A method based on a stormwater management model (SWMM) was developed for assessing the control of stormwater runoff volume and the percentage removal of suspended solids by implementing a Sponge City strategy. An interdisciplinary approach was adopted incorporating Low Impact Development (LID) with urban green infrastructure and grey infrastructure paradigms in a typical old residential community in Suzhou, China. Sponge facilities for reducing stormwater runoff included bio-retention cells, permeable pavements, grassed pitches, and stormwater gardens. The simulation results of SWMM show that the stormwater pipe system can meet the management standard for storms with a five-year recurrence interval. The volume capture ratio of annual runoff was 91%, which is higher than control target of 80%. The suspended solids reduction rate was 56%, which meets the requirement of planning indicators. Thus, the proposed method of spongy facilities can be used for renovation planning in old residential areas in China. Implementing spongy facilities with a LID strategy for stormwater management can significantly enhance urban water resilience and improve ecosystem services.
Highlights
Intensified global urbanization in the past 100 years with increased climate changePublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.has significantly increased urban stormwater runoff volume with uncertainties [1] and brought with it numerous problems of water pollution and flood disasters [2] to cause a dramatic change to urban living [3]
As shown in the table, the simulation results show that the total annual runoff control volume of the Shuixianghuayuan old residential area is 970.75 m3, which is equivalent to 41.52 mm of the designed rainfall depth and corresponds to 91% of the volume capture ratio of annual runoff
Previous studies have focused on Low Impact Development (LID) in order to pursue sustainability and reported that different green infrastructure (GI) parameters show different sensitivities that are related to rainfall characteristics [39]
Summary
Intensified global urbanization in the past 100 years with increased climate changePublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.has significantly increased urban stormwater runoff volume with uncertainties [1] and brought with it numerous problems of water pollution and flood disasters [2] to cause a dramatic change to urban living [3]. Since 1981, the country’s built-up urban areas have increased by 29.5 times, and the average urban road area per person has increased by 9.2 times (Figure 1) Such rapid urbanization [4], together with the effects of climate change, has caused serious environmental problems, since impervious surfaces convert precipitation to “Sponge City Program” relating to best management practices was proposed in 2013 for sustainable development in urban areas, which have sound “flexibility” integrating green and grey infrastructures to adapt to environmental changes and natural disasters. City development can manage urban surface runoff by absorbing, storing, seeping, and purifying stormwater runoff, to combine ecological facilities and green-space patches with traditional grey infrastructure for urban runoff control [8]. Such stormwater management can solve the problems of waterlogging and water pollution, and improve the water utilization efficiency to enhance ecosystem services in urban areas [9,10]
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