Achieving multifunctional, holistic and sustainable stormwater management in existing development (2021-2025)

Urbanisation poses challenges, inter alia connected to conventional stormwater infrastructure involving risks for flooding, environmental pollution etc. Transformation towards a sustainable (storm)water management is challenging especially in existing urban areas where the existing sewer network hinders transition.

The aim of this project is to support transformation in these catchments by evaluating the environmental, economic and social/technical sustainability of scenarios involving different setups of blue-green stormwater infrastructure. The scenarios will be co-developed for example catchments in Malmö and Östersund along three scales (complexity, spatial, time scale) in a living lab approach by the project partners LTU, SLU, RISE, Östersund municipality and VA SYD.

Given the complex, inter/cross-disciplinary nature of sustainable stormwater planning and management, the evaluation of these scenarios will include the technical-environmental function (WP1), valuation of socio-economic multiple benefits (WP2), and strategic management/governance (WP3). These will be inter-connected in a sustainability assessment in WP4 and, finally, in WP5 in a synthesis to inform development of evidence-based recommendations for successful transformation towards sustainable, multifunctional urban stormwater management plans.

The societal benefit of this project is illustrated by its contribution to various SDGs, specifically SDGs 6 and 11, but also SDGs 3, 9, 8, 12, 13 and 14.

Project time: 2021-2025 | Financier: Formas

Partners: SLU, RISE, VA SYD, Östersund municipality, Stormwater&Sewers

Godecke-Tobias Blecken och Maria Viklander