Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) is a land planning and engineering design approach which integrates the urban water cycle, including stormwater, groundwater, and wastewater management and water supply, into urban design to minimise environmental degradation and improve aesthetic and recreational appeal. WSUD is a term used in the Middle East and Australia and is similar to low-impact development (LID), a term used in the United States; and Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS), a term used in the United Kingdom.
Traditional urban and industrial development alters landscapes from permeable vegetated surfaces to a series of impervious interconnected surfaces resulting in large quantities of stormwater runoff, requiring management. Like other industrialized countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia has treated stormwater runoff as a liability and nuisance, endangering human health and property. This resulted in a strong focus on the design of stormwater management systems that rapidly convey stormwater runoff directly to streams with little or no focus on ecosystem preservation. This management approach results in what is referred to as urban stream syndrome. Heavy rainfall flows rapidly into streams carrying pollutants and sediments washed off from impervious surfaces, resulting in streams carrying elevated concentrations of pollutants, nutrients, and suspended solids. Increased peak flow also alters channel morphology and stability, further proliferating sedimentation and drastically reducing biotic richness.
Increased recognition of urban stream syndrome in the 1960s resulted in some movement toward holistic stormwater management in Australia. Awareness increased greatly during the 1990s with the Federal government and scientists cooperating through the Cooperative Research Centre program. Increasingly city planners have recognised the need for an integrated management approach to potable, waste, and stormwater management, to enable cities to adapt and become resilient to the pressure which population growth, urban densification and climate change places on ageing and increasingly expensive water infrastructure.
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This project-based course introduces students to the field of urban climate and hydrology, with a focus on nature-based solutions for the design of climate and water resilient cities.
Ce cours en hydrologie urbaine aborde la gestion de l'eau urbaine d'un point de vue global, incluant notamment les impacts des rejets pluviaux sur les milieux récepteurs. Des solutions concrètes de ge
Sustainable freshwater and urban drainage system are considered.
For fresh water, the capture, reservoir and net are discussed.
For the drainage, hydrology as well as the individual conduit and manh
Stormwater harvesting or Stormwater reuse is the collection, accumulation, treatment or purification, and storage of stormwater for its eventual reuse. While rainwater harvesting collects precipitation primarily from rooftops, stormwater harvesting deals with collection of runoff from creeks, gullies, ephemeral streams, underground conveyances ( pipes ). It can also include catchment areas from developed surfaces, such as roads or parking lots, or other urban environments such as parks, gardens and playing fields.
Nature-based solutions (NBS) is the sustainable management and use of natural features and processes to tackle socio-environmental issues. These issues include climate change (mitigation and adaptation), water security, water pollution, food security, human health, biodiversity loss, and disaster risk management. The European Commission's definition of NBS states that these solutions are "inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience.
Rain gardens, also called bioretention facilities, are one of a variety of practices designed to increase rain runoff reabsorption by the soil. They can also be used to treat polluted stormwater runoff. Rain gardens are designed landscape sites that reduce the flow rate, total quantity, and pollutant load of runoff from impervious urban areas like roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots, and compacted lawn areas.
Aerosols formed and grown by gas-to-particle processes are a major contributor to smog and haze in megacities, despite the competition between growth and loss rates. Rapid growth rates from ammonium nitrate formation have the potential to sustain particle ...
Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a complementary approach to clinical case-based surveillance of emergent diseases and can help identify regions with infected people to prioritize clinical surveillance strategies. However, tracking emergent diseases in ...
Context • Groundwater major water resource throughout the world that is heterogeneously distributed and sustains diversified uses • The sustainability of groundwater usage highly dependent on the relative rates of groundwater abstraction e g via pumping) a ...