Adaptive Strategies for Urban Rainwater Drainage Systems in Climate Change Scenarios

Significant changes in the rainwater regime are amongst climate change’s most noticeable consequences. Urban flooding occurs because of drainage systems’ inability to transport all the runoff that is generated. Because of... [ view full abstract ]

Significant changes in the rainwater regime are amongst climate change’s most noticeable consequences. Urban flooding occurs because of drainage systems’ inability to transport all the runoff that is generated. Because of urban floods, cities may present several economic, social and health issues. In this research we attempted to minimize these effects by adapting and not replacing cities’ current drainage infrastructure to the new hydrology conditions. The main objective was to determine the feasibility of implementing temporary storage structures in any big city, regardless of its geographical and socioeconomic context, to reduce rainfall peak flow rates and avoid urban flooding events. This project was developed in cooperation with universities from Colombia, Spain, Portugal and Argentina, and allowed us to create a methodology to optimize the location and volume of these tanks to adapt cities to climate change conditions. Additionally, this project tested a methodology to calculate future rain intensities, so cities can be better prepared to face future challenges. Finally, regarding sustainable development, we concluded that future urban drainage systems should try to imitate the natural drainage that existed in the basin long before cities were built. This is important since human intervention has distanced itself from natural drainage, which is a mistake since natural drainage is more effective than what we have done in the cities as urban drainage.

Keywords: Climate Change, Urban Floods, Storm Tanks, Urban Drainage, SUDS.