Abstract
The application of blue and green infrastructure in urban stormwater management has attracted increasing interest in recent years. At the same time, one can observe a heavy modification of urban watercourses by land reclamation measures aiming at canalizing, straightening, and draining existing water systems at many places around the world. In the context of sustainable urban development, the question arises, whether the reactivation of former watercourses could be an additional option to support urban stormwater management. This article introduces a process to identify former watercourses and to pre-assess their suitability to support urban stormwater management considering different hydraulic functionalities and stormwater related criteria. To prove the practicability of the approach, it was applied in a case study. Our investigations revealed that the reactivation of former watercourses can provide additional opportunities towards more nature-based and sustainable stormwater management in the urban fabric.
Highlights
Both changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change and increased urbanization are expected to have adverse effects on existing urban drainage systems and are leading to a need for adaptation [1]
The implementation of blue green infrastructure (BGI) for stormwater management or similar concepts such as water sensitive urban design (WSUD) or low impact development (LID) to achieve this adaptation has been promoted in the past decades [2]
In Germany BGI has been successfully implemented for stormwater management in several cities [4]
Summary
Both changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change and increased urbanization are expected to have adverse effects on existing urban drainage systems and are leading to a need for adaptation [1]. The implementation of blue green infrastructure (BGI) for stormwater management or similar concepts such as water sensitive urban design (WSUD) or low impact development (LID) to achieve this adaptation has been promoted in the past decades [2]. [3] illustrate, how BGI implementation was used to increase flood resilience. In Germany BGI has been successfully implemented for stormwater management in several cities [4]. Integrating BGI into stormwater management even provides additional benefits going beyond reduced pluvial flood risk [5] due to the different processes involved (retention, infiltration, conveyance) [6]. Decentralized BGI increases retention, evapotranspiration, and infiltration to restore the natural local water balance [7]. BGI can be used to mitigate urban heat islands [8] and decrease water pollution [9]
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