Water Concepts

Water-sensitive city planning - measures for sustainable, climate-adapted settlement water management

The project aims to collate available technological knowledge regarding the handling of precipitation water in city planning, to analyse planning practice and to develop technical, legal and organisational activity recommendations for water-sensitive, participant city planning adapted to climate change.

Summary

Climate change will result in increasingly heavy rainfall in future. So far, however, the problem has not been quantified and city planning has no countermeasures at its disposal. The research project's aim is to create activity recommendations for water-sensitive city planning that takes into account urban water circulation in urban planning, urban construction and urban landscaping. To this end, the currently available tools and planning processes were examined in regard to their adaptability to climate change and its inherent consequences. The results of the practical analysis were subjected to practical tests in the partner parishes Bochum, Herne and Essen. In collaboration with the participants on site, models for canalisation systems (sewage network models) and surface models were created and applied with the aim of developing solution concepts for various water-management problems. The activity recommendations derived provide organisational (legal foundation, communication) and technical information in the form of best-practice examples for case-specific planning practice. The technical information also facilitates assessment of local excess retention risk.

Results:

In future, it will become necessary in city planning to avoid areas prone to flooding. An exchange of knowledge and closer cooperation between the involved disciplines settlement water management, city planning and the social sciences is required.
The recommended legal tools and processes stipulate the specification of green spaces and areas for water management as well as indication of areas subject to flooding in construction-site and surface-usage plans. In addition, the design of open spaces, the ground's water retention capacity, drainage and rainwater management are to be specified in local ordinance.
The recommended technical measures focus on leaching (including basin and rubble drain systems), drainage (various trench and ditch systems), retention (including rainwater basins, retention filters, greening and small-scale basins) and use of rainwater in households and for green space irrigation.
Inclusion of residents can be achieved through structural methods (incentives, competitions, sponsorship etc.), directed communication such as brochures and other media coverage, information events and through voluntary commitments, feedback techniques (water meters) and awareness-promotion methods (round tables, workshops, open councils).

Project Participants

Promotion

More Project Informations

View Publication

Source: German National Library of Science and Technology Hannover (TIB)