New Kempe Foundations grant to advance process understanding of nature-based stormwater solutions

The Kempe Foundations have awarded funding for the project“Integrated Process Understanding for Future Nature-Based Stormwater Solutions.”

Urban flooding and stormwater pollution are interrelated challenges driven by climate change and increasing urbanisation. In combination, they reduce the resilience of urban catchments to extreme weathers and hinder the achievement of good chemical and ecological status in receiving waters. Nature-based solutions (NBS), such as bioretention cells and swales, are increasingly implemented to address these challenges. However, despite their widespread use, their internal functioning is still not fully understood and is often treated as a “black box”.

The project aims to move beyond this “black box” perspective by developing a process-based understanding of how water and pollutants move through and are transformed within these systems. The research combines non-invasive monitoring techniques with advanced analytical methods. In particular, the project will:

• Use geophysical methods to characterise how water flows through biofilters and swales in space and time, including preferential flow paths and internal system dynamics
• Apply carbon-14 isotope tracing to track the fate of organic contaminants and resolve key processes such as sorption, degradation, and plant uptake
• Integrate these insights into process-based models to improve predictions of treatment performance

The grant of SEK 695,000 strengthens two ongoing Formas projects - “Isotopic tracing and process-based modelling to identify pathways of toxic substances in stormwater biofilters” (2025-2029) and “Scanning Infiltration: re-evaluate hydrological dynamics in Nature-Based stormwater Solutions through a non-invasive approach” (2026-2029). The funding will enhance analytical and measurement capabilities while enabling a closer integration of hydrological processes with the fate of pollutants. Overall, the project will generate new knowledge about how nature-based stormwater solutions function, providing a stronger scientific basis for their design, operation, and maintenance.

More information about the projects:

• Integrated Process Understanding for Future Nature-Based Stormwater Solutions
• Isotope tracing and process-based modeling to identify pathways for toxic substances in stormwater biofilters
  
• Infiltration scanning: Reassessment of hydrological dynamics in nature-based stormwater solutions using a non-invasive method

Contact:
Godecke Blecken, Kelsey Flanagan, and Haoyu Wei