Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
• Establish a Planning Process to Adapt Water Resources Management to a
Changing Climate
• Improve Water Resources and Climate Change Information for Decision-Making
• Strengthen Assessment of Vulnerability of Water Resources to Climate Change
• Expand Water Use Efficiency
• Support Integrated Water Resource Management
• Support training and Outreach to Build Response Capability
• Below are presented adaptation approaches for the management challenges of
urban drainage, water supply, and river flooding.
Drainage
Researchers are stressing using flexible, decentralized approaches to adapt to the in-
creased drainage flooding and associated water quality impacts under climate change
(Auld et al (2010), WERF 2009). This is in contrast to large-scale solutions such as sewer
separation, which might be effective and robust, but also overly expensive and inflex-
ible, although they continue to be effective in reducing the amount of combined waste-
water that must be treated. One of the most flexible and decentralized approaches is
Low Impact Development (LID), in which even without climate change, there is cur-
rently much interest and some such as Heaney and Sansalone (2009) view as one of
the best approaches for the future management of urban drainage. Thus this approach
is no-regrets policy. LID is “. . . an approach to land development (or re-development)
that works with nature to manage storm water as close to its source as possible. LID em-
ploys principles such as preserving and recreating natural landscape features, minimiz-
ing effective imperviousness to create functional and appealing site drainage that treat
storm water as a resource rather than a waste product.” (U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, htp://www.epa.gov/owow/NPS/lid, accessed July 5, 2011). LID techniques es-
sentially let the water stay where it falls either through storage or infiltration and are
seen as particularly promising to beter manage runof by keeping the water out of the
built drainage network and not leting the lows concentrate and cause damage (Roseen
et al, 2011). LID techniques include decentralized approaches such as green and blue
roofs, porous pavement, preservation of buffers, bioretention (i.e., infiltration), distrib-
uted storage, and rain gardens. Conventional approaches are generally designed for
singe large events such as 10 or 100-year events and may not have the water quality ben-
efits of LID. LID techniques also have the additional benefits of providing more open,
green space in communities, aiding GHG mitigation, and have social and environmental
benefits.
Some drawbacks of LID include potential construction and maintenance costs, pres-
ently unknown long-term performance, possible atraction of waterborne diseases, and
ability to manage only the first inch or few inches of a storm. Management of the first
inch or so may be adequate for water quality but will not stop large scale local flooding.
Effective management of storm water may require mixing green and gray (conven-
tional) approaches (Roseen, et al., 2011). Gray manages large flooding events and LID
Search WWH ::




Custom Search