Wednesday Poster Session - Knowledge transfer

The Water in Urban Nature-based Design for Resilience (WUNDR) Center was formed to bring together urban water researchers from different disciplines and global areas to address urban flooding and stormwater management issues. The Center focuses on systematically examining how findings from nature-based solutions (NbS) research can be used more effectively and efficiently by the entire stormwater community to satisfy multiple objectives. WUNDR’s goal is to comprehensively evaluate, develop, create, and recommend data management and data-informed strategies for NbS implementation that are transferable worldwide and across diverse physiographic regions. Through the creation of a platform for sharing and integrating knowledge for the advancements of NbS, research across fields can be facilitated and ideas can be synergized across different parts of the world. Initial work has identified the gap between academic literature and municipal guidance on NbS design that presents a barrier for NbS to be planned and designed for multiple objectives. A study was conducted that evaluated how multiple design objectives are included in municipal design guidance and how design guidance overlaps with each other. 

Climate adaptation requires innovative approaches to address collaborative knowledge exchange and multidisciplinary problem solving. For over a decade, ClimateScan has provided an open-source platform to map urban resilience and existing climate adaptation solutions implemented all over the world. Apart from providing data, this tool also supports a citizen science approach, contributing to active stakeholder engagement. This study aims to develop and apply calculation methods and visualisation techniques to the database in order to generate comprehensive insights into climate adaptation patterns and their contribution to urban resilience in the Netherlands. Initial indications of analysed data show that storage capacities of integrated stormwater infrastructure, such as bioswales and wetlands, have increased significantly over the last 20 years resulting in close to a minimum of 1,6 million m3 storage volume. This trend is evident in both large urban areas as well as small villages, thereby supporting sustainable climate adaptation strategies. Through the application of this open-source tool, it is possible to engage a wide range of stakeholders to contribute to developing the database for a specific area. 

The accelerated urbanization process typical of large Brazilian cities has resulted in increased soil sealing and overloading of the macro-drainage system, leading to more frequent flooding, as well as worsening erosion processes and water pollution due to diffuse unassimilated loads. To combat these impacts, the combination of conventional drainage with source control strategies, such as Nature-based Solutions (NbS), is essential to increase urban hydrological resilience. The successful implementation of these NBS depends directly on social support, which requires the democratization of technical knowledge through robust engagement strategies, such as workshops and, crucially, the development of explanatory material. This article aims to present the structure of a Digital Sustainable Drainage Primer, developed for the Brazilian municipality of São José dos Campos, but designed to be universally adaptable. 

The deployment of green infrastructure (GI) for sustainable stormwater management faces major challenges related to maintenance, which is essential to ensure performance and longevity. The Blue-Green Alley project in Montréal’s Southwest borough (Québec, Canada), winner of the Thierry Maytraud Trophy in 2019, serves as a case study to analyze these issues. Two years after its inauguration, it demonstrates how mutualization responsibilities among public and private stakeholders can make maintenance more feasible and accessible. This approach is based on sharing roles, resources, and costs, fostering collaboration and reducing individual burdens. The process includes five key steps: identifying stakeholders, defining maintenance activities, clarifying expectations, building consensus, and maintaining that consensus through tools and regular meetings. The benefits include improved governance, optimized financial, human, and technical resources, and the preservation of quality and service levels over time. By turning a constraint into an opportunity, resource sharing paves the way for reproducible and adaptable models, strengthening urban resilience in the face of climate challenges. 

The authors will present the results of a multiyear effort, to create a Post-Construction Stormwater Management Manual for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, replacing a 2006 version. Major changes include: an emphasize on resilience, inclusion of climate change considerations, updated analysis methods involving Stormwater Control Measure (SCM) unit processes (infiltration, evapotranspiration, and water quality treatment), consideration of temporal distribution of the rainfall, and a lifecycle approach (that considers long term maintenance of SCMs). 

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are infrastructure systems designed to manage stormwater while also meeting service goals such as improving ecosystems services and water quality.  Design guidelines for each specific NBS should include comprehensive information on the strategies and methodologies necessary to achieve the designated service objectives, thereby ensuring their successful realization. Herein, we evaluated bioretention design guidelines from different parts of the world to examine how various practitioners recommend achieving stormwater quality improvement objectives, in particular by reviewing the water quality advice recommended regarding filter media. Among the seven guidelines reviewed, one did not provide any explicit statements regarding the targeted pollutants for removal. Furthermore, only 3/7 guidelines offered recommendations for selecting filter media materials based on pollutant removal considerations, and only 1/7 guidelines tied the calculation of media depth to water quality. Further reviews of these guidelines will evaluate the planting selection, ponding depth, water quantity volume estimation, and their effect on water quality. 

The National Quality Charter for Sustainable and Integrated Stormwater Management Works and Developments is a framework of best practices that aims to improve stormwater management in urban areas. It requires all stakeholders involved in the construction, development, and management of urban areas to coordinate their efforts to create permeable spaces that are resilient to rain. This charter was drafted by the Astee National Rainwater Quality Charter working group and is essential to ensuring that development projects comply with best practices and are adapted to the local context. This new Charter was signed in 2024 at the 103rd Astee Congress in Quimper by the majority of the main stakeholders in sustainable stormwater management. The aim of this conference will therefore be to present this new charter and to share feedback based on its implementation.