Abstract
Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS), or urban green infrastructure for stormwater control, emerged for more sustainable management of runoff in cities and provide other benefits such as urban mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Research in Spain began a little over twenty years ago, which was later than in other European countries, and it began in a heterogeneous way, both in the SUDS typology and spatially within the peninsular geography. The main objective of this work has been to know through bibliographic review the state of the art of scientific research of these systems and their relationship with the different types of climates in the country. These structures have a complex and sensitive dependence on the climate, which in the Iberian Peninsula is mostly type B and C (according to the Köppen classification). This means little water availability for the vegetation of some SUDS, which can affect the performance of the technique. To date, for this work, research has focused mainly on green roofs, their capabilities as a sustainable construction tool, and the performance of different plant species used in these systems in arid climates. The next technique with the most real cases analyzed is permeable pavements in temperate climates, proving to be effective in reducing flows and runoff volumes. Other specific investigations have focused on the economic feasibility of installing rainwater harvesting systems for the laundry and the hydraulic performance of retention systems located specifically in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. On the contrary, few scientific articles have appeared that describe other SUDS with vegetation such as bioretention systems or green ditches, which are characteristic of sustainable cities, on which the weather can be a very limiting factor for their development.
Highlights
A new approach to urban stormwater management emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, introducing a holistic and environmentalist approach to urban hydrology, and which is increasingly spreading around all cities of the world [1]
The development of the methodology followed has had the corresponding steps: (i) Bibliographic search in SCOPUS, to find any paper about Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) in Spain; (ii) Selection of the bibliography found, which was focused on obtaining the necessary data to answer the research question in this article (What is the state of scientific research on SUDS in Spain?); and (iii) Obtaining information from the selected documents focused mainly on knowing the temporal evolution of research in this field in Spain, if there were more theoretical studies than empirical cases, what techniques were most analyzed according to the different climates of the country or if there was some type of stormwater green infrastructure that has not been studied or monitored
SUDS, we refer to those articles that deal with the sustainable management of urban runoff in a general way and not always using that term, green infrastructures
Summary
A new approach to urban stormwater management emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, introducing a holistic and environmentalist approach to urban hydrology, and which is increasingly spreading around all cities of the world [1]. This methodology reproduces, as faithfully as possible, the natural hydrological cycle to minimize the impact of urban development It aims to reduce the negative impacts in terms of quantity and quality of runoff, as well as maximize the landscape integration and the social and environmental value of the elements involved in urban stormwater management [2]. A very widespread one is Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS), those elements of the infrastructure (urban–hydraulic–landscaping) whose mission is capture, filter, retain, transport, store, and infiltrate the urban runoff, trying to reproduce as close as possible the natural water cycle [3] This definition is similar to green infrastructures in the United States: an approach to hydrological cycle that uses soils and vegetation to enhance and/or mimic the natural hydrologic cycle processes of infiltration, evapotranspiration, and reuse [4].
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