Tuesday Poster Session - Governance & development

The Regulatory Standard 12/2025, entitled Structuring of Public Services for Urban Stormwater Drainage and Management, was published by the Brazilian National Water and Basic Sanitation Agency (ANA) in March 2025 (ANA, 2025). This regulation aims to organize the urban stormwater drainage and management services, similar to other basic sanitation services, which in Brazil comprise the supply of drinking water, sanitary sewerage, and urban solid waste management and urban cleaning (Brazil, 2007). However, the urban stormwater drainage and management service in Brazil is still characterized by a lack of standards, precise target-setting, innovation capacity, and routine policy evaluation. It is carried out primarily by municipal governments, but without a widespread organizational practice; therefore, the standard presents the services in two major blocks: activities, and infrastructure and operational facilities. The activities encompass planning; coordination with other instruments and policies; project design and execution; operation and maintenance; and management and administration, while the infrastructure and operational facilities comprise collection; water conveyance; flow and volume attenuation; treatment; and final disposal. This definition will enable progress in the provision of this public service on a national scale, considering local, climatic, hydrological, administrative, and urban development particularities in a country as vast as Brazil. 

Desealing embraces several territorial issues like water management, adaptation to climate change, the well-being of inhabitants and biodiversity. The DésiVille R&D project (2021-2024) produced a methodological guide to map the soil potential for desealing, as a harmonized and concerted framework. The methodology considers 4 thematics: i) the characteristics of the sealed surfaces, ii) the potential of infiltration of soils, iii) the environmental risks and the protection of natural resources, and iv) the benefits of desealing. In this frame, soil and subsurface information represent essential criteria. In practice, many desealing operations are carried out. The feedback analyses of desealing practices shows a lack of consideration of several hazards, especially soil pollution and groundwater level rise. It is often considered that rainwater may be infiltrated anywhere. The potential impact of water infiltration on soil and subsurface shows the necessity to consider the linked hazards (soluble rock, pollution, groundwater table rise, stability) in the decision-making process before implementing desealing solutions. By extent, these recommendations are also true for rainwater integrated management. 

The study investigates the integration of permeable pavements into sustainable urban mobility planning in Bologna, Italy, assessing their stormwater management benefits under current and future climate conditions. A representative 50-hectare residential catchment within Bologna municipality was analyzed through long-term hydrological-hydraulic simulations in EPA SWMM. Scenarios built consider the implementation of permeable pavements, in currently impervious areas that are not occupied by building or major roads, such as pedestrian paths and parking areas. A calibrated LID parameter set derived from laboratory experiments was applied to the model. Results indicate substantial benefits, with a drained stormwater volumes reduced by 40% under current climate and by 38% under future conditions. Findings support Bologna’s Urban Plan for Sustainable Mobility, highlighting permeable pavements as an effective strategy to improve overall stormwater management capacity by addressing the constraints of highly densified urban areas. The study shows how permeable pavements can be integrated into the mobility plan as a climate-adaptation measure, complementing mitigation strategies and offering synergies to guide effective urban planning.