River Restoration Integrated with Sustainable Urban Water Management for Resilient Cities

Aline Pires Veról,Ianic Bigate Lourenço,João Paulo Rebechi Fraga,Bruna Peres Battemarco,Marcelo Gomes Miguez,Mylenna Linares Merlo,Paulo Canedo De Magalhães

doi:10.3390/su12114677

Aline Pires Veról, Ianic Bigate Lourenço + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12114677

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Jun 8, 2020
Citations: 14	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Urban floods can threaten citizens’ quality of life, produce socioeconomic losses, and act as an urban degradation driver. Restoring urban rivers, however, is not simple and its results are usually limited. It would be desirable to enhance urban fluvial systems, control flood risks, and increase city resilience while improving the city itself. This work suggests that river restoration, when applied to an urban watershed, should be supported by sustainable urban drainage measures to compensate for the negative effects induced by city growth in the water cycle, in a systemic approach to the entire watershed. A methodological framework is proposed to verify this hypothesis intending to assess urban flooding projects in a wide sense. This framework uses a hydrodynamic mathematical model and a set of multicriteria indices. A case study in Dona Eugênia Watershed, in Brazil, was developed. Two different design concepts were considered: the usual drainage design and the river restoration combined with sustainable urban drainage. Both solutions were designed to completely solve the problems, leading to virtually zero flooding in the present situation; however, environmental and urban gains were greater when using the proposed combination. Besides, when testing resilience behavior, it was also shown to be more consistent over time.

Highlights

Human activities tend to introduce changes in the pattern of land use and occupation, which lead to a series of processes that modify the quality of the natural and built environment [1,2]
The results are presented in the following items, first considering each alternative in the present, presenting a flood resilience assessment for a future stress situation
The complete set of results is extensive, but this broad picture intends to show, first, how different design approaches can solve flooding problems in the present, and second, how the same approaches can respond to future challenges in regards to flood resilience

Summary

Introduction

Human activities tend to introduce changes in the pattern of land use and occupation, which lead to a series of processes that modify the quality of the natural and built environment [1,2]. Losses are increasing and huge amounts of money are spent each year to repair damages and to make new hydraulic works, in an endless spiral of rising costs, as reported in works developed in European countries [6], Bangladesh [7], USA [8], and Brazil [9] Many of these cases are fostered by the need to reduce hydraulic risks, where floods play an important role in the degradation process, both in the vicinities of the river and in the river itself. The loss of naturalness tends to weaken the system, increase risks and losses, and damage the environment

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