Abstract
The rapid urban growth followed by disordered occupation has been generating significant impacts on cities, bringing losses of an economic and social nature that directly interfere with the well-being of the population. In this work, a proposal for local urban infrastructure problems associated with watercourse management is presented, comparing Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) techniques and Low-Impact Development (LID) concepts with alternative traditional interventions. The study addresses sustainable alternatives to cope with the urbanization of the Cehab’s open channel, which is an important urban watercourse tributary of the Muriaé River, at the municipality of Itaperuna, Rio de Janeiro—Brazil. The multi-criteria decision-making method called Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was applied here. The results highlighted the better performance of sustainable techniques when compared to the traditional ones, with an overall advantage of the geogrids and geocells for this case study. The obtained TOPSIS coefficients-C for these techniques were higher (0.59488, for Reach 1; and 0.68656, for Reach 2) than those for the others. This research, therefore, presented an important urban watercourse management methodology that can be further applied to guide sustainable investments and help the decision-making associated with the development of territories.
Highlights
Accompanied by the development of society and cities, the concepts of urban infrastructure have been adjusted through time
The impacts, of an urban drainage system not properly conceived can result in a considerable change in the ecosystem and the quality of life of the community
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), which are broadly defined as solutions to societal challenges that are inspired and supported by nature, seek sustainable techniques as alternatives to respect the natural aspects of the environment, minimizing the effects of urbanization on the hydrological cycle [24]
Summary
Accompanied by the development of society and cities, the concepts of urban infrastructure have been adjusted through time. The conventional drainage systems are characterized to adopt techniques with basic principles of meander straightening (rectification) that tend to accelerate the flow in the channels, mostly conducted for local flood control [10,11] These systems are considered as focusing on the drainage network itself, shortening along-channel distances and increasing the steepness of the slopes in order to drain local excess rainwater. These techniques reduce flood elevations in a given area, they create some detrimental effects (e.g., increasing settlement and flooding downstream, reducing fish habitat, and increasing degradation of the channel bed) [11,12,13]. Numerous measures to balance the changes imposed by urban growth in the water cycle have been developed, enabling changes in the path of sustainability to the traditional concept
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