Urban Stormwater Management Solutions

When rain falls on cities, it hits rooftops, roads, and parking lots instead of soil, picking up pollutants and rushing into drainage systems faster than natural landscapes ever would. Urban stormwater management studies how to intercept, slow, and clean that runoff before it floods streets, overwhelms sewers, or degrades rivers and coastal waters. Engineers and hydrologists have developed approaches ranging from bioretention cells and permeable pavements to distributed rainwater harvesting systems, collectively known as low impact development or sustainable drainage, which aim to mimic pre-urban hydrology at the neighborhood scale. Active research questions center on how well these systems perform as rainfall patterns shift under climate change, and how to design and retrofit them equitably across cities where impervious cover and flood risk are rarely distributed evenly.

Works

51,719

Total citations

533,026

Keywords

Urban Stormwater ManagementSustainable Drainage SystemsLow Impact Development PracticesBioretention TechnologyUrban HydrologyWater Quality