Integrating issues of scale and benefits into a novel planning framework for nature-based solutions to urban flooding

Currently, extensive literature exists on blue-green infrastructure, flood management through nature-based solutions, and urban flood management. However, significant gaps exist around the scale and timing of interventions, the evaluation and balancing of the multiple benefits such schemes can provide, and the methodologies used to design and assess these approaches. Recent climate literature indicates that the frequency and severity of urban flooding is likely to increase in many areas of the world in the next century. Continued urbanization and trends such as building on floodplains also increase the scale of vulnerability as well as that of the hazards, creating significant changes in demand on urban flood management systems. These factors, combined with the high cost and environmental impacts of traditional flood management, have led to a significant move towards greener techniques in urban flood management. Large scale nature based urban flood management is also beginning to evolve as a field in more developed countries, with examples such as the Chinese sponge city concept, previous work in Hull around the city's surface water management plan, and recent development of projects throughout the Netherlands. In low- and middle-income countries, there are many cases where SuDS, or similar technologies, have been implemented in cities, either citywide or within certain areas. This project will assess these different approaches, and build an understanding of how the scale and timing of interventions can be used to maximise the benefits provided to the targeted urban areas.

The main aim of the project is to establish an optimal method for using blue-green infrastructure-based approaches as a solution for urban flooding while providing wider benefits to the target area. Related research questions are likely to consider (1) At what stage of the city planning process should blue-green infrastructure approaches be integrated to offer maximum flood management benefit? What is this maximum benefit level? (2) How does aiming for optimal flood management limit/affect other positive benefits of blue-green infrastructure? How can these trade-offs be managed? (3) At what spatial scale should blue-green infrastructure approaches be designed for this purpose? (Citywide integrated plans? By district? Etc). (4) How are the above findings affected by the likely progression of climate change? (Increasing flood frequency/severity, shifting priorities in the kinds of services desired from green infrastructure, etc.).

Methodologies but are likely to comprise the following approaches: (1) Stakeholder engagement approaches such as focus groups of urban planners; (2) Use of climate model data to approximate changes in the magnitude and frequency of future flood events; (3) Hydrological modelling of flood events on hypothetically modified city layouts; (4) Use of 9m2 rainfall simulator to investigate pluvial flooding on different green infrastructure arrangements.

This project does not currently have a specific geographic location of primary focus, any decisions on this will likely depend on the areas where potential impact partners are operating.

It is intended that this project will support enhanced adoption of blue-green infrastructure and nature-based solutions approaches in order to address urban flooding throughout low, middle, and high-income countries (subject to the locations addressed in the project). The major outcomes of this project should be development of the novel methodologies for the modelling of blue-green urban flood management, and a decision-making framework to support engineers and planners in the designing of interventions. This will allow for the better delivery of ecosystem services within flood-prone urban areas.

Water-WISER will train a cohort of 50 British research engineers and scientists and equip them to work in challenging environments both in the low-income settings of rapidly growing poor cities and in the changing urban environment of the UK, Europe and other regions with a historic endowment of aging infrastructure. The vision is for a generation of engineers with the skills to deliver the trans-disciplinary innovations needed to ensure that future water, waste and sanitation infrastructure is resilient to the stresses posed by rapid urbanisation, global climate change and increasingly extreme natural and man-made disasters. Our alumni will address the urgent need to re-imagine urban spaces as net contributors to ecological and environmental well-being rather than being net users of vital resources such as energy, nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon. These new leaders will be an essential resource if the UK is to deliver on its commitment to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6 which calls for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services, within planetary and local ecological boundaries. This next generation of research engineers will enable UK-based engineering consultancies, manufacturers, and utility companies to grow their share of the expanding global market for water and waste services, for example; in the water services industry from 3% to 10% (an increase of £33 billion per annum) by 2030, and attract significant inward investment.
The research which Water-WISER cohorts enable will form the basis of new innovations in the design and delivery of resilient infrastructure and services. Innovations developed by Water-WISER graduates will inform how growing cities are designed and built in the global south and will be used to inform the re-engineering and replacement of the aging infrastructure on which the UK's water and waste services are currently reliant. Our alumni will form the new generation of leaders who will play a central role in securing a larger share of the international water and waste management consultancy market to UK consultancies. The network of expertise and skills created by Water-WISER will enhance potential for collaborations between major UK players (for example strengthening links between UK consultancy, the Department for International Development, and leading UK water agencies such as WaterAid and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor) and between UK companies and partners in the global south including international investors such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Graduates of Water-WISER will enter industry, academia and development agencies having spent a substantial period (minimum of six months) embedded in an industry or development partner organisation delivering their field-based research. Water-WISER students will thus gain a unique combination of trans-disciplinary training, field experience and cohort networking; they are destined for leadership roles in UK and international engineering and development consultancies, academia, international development banks, international agencies such as the United Nations and international non-governmental organisations.