Urban Stormwater Management Solutions

When rain falls on cities, it hits rooftops, roads, and parking lots instead of soil, picking up pollutants and flowing rapidly into drainage systems that were rarely designed to handle today's volumes or intensities. Urban stormwater management research examines how to intercept, slow, and clean that runoff before it degrades waterways, floods streets, or overwhelms sewers — drawing on engineering approaches like bioretention cells, permeable pavements, and rainwater harvesting systems that mimic or restore natural hydrological processes. A central challenge is quantifying how well these interventions scale across different urban densities, soil types, and storm patterns, particularly as climate change shifts the frequency and magnitude of extreme rainfall events. Researchers are also working to understand cumulative water quality effects as cities retrofit piecemeal green infrastructure into existing drainage networks built around very different assumptions.

Works

50,814

Total citations

526,848

Keywords

Urban Stormwater ManagementSustainable Drainage SystemsLow Impact Development PracticesBioretention TechnologyUrban HydrologyWater Quality