Abstract Summary
How to overcome urban flooding and drought caused by extreme and volatile precipitation through innovative forms of climate adaptation? And how to fit this into a heavily occupied public urban space? Challenging questions that, in light of climate change and the continuous process of rapid world-wide urbanization, become more and more critical to those involved in urban water management and resilient urban design. Amsterdam, amongst others, faces an enormous challenge to protect itself against the consequences of extreme weather due to a changing climate. Infiltration and buffering of rainwater in the underground can prevent potential problems related to flooding and drought while the burden on the urban water system is minimized. Space in the underground is scarce, however. Critical infrastructure and urban greening compete with climate adaptation measures for the limited space available. Smart integral designs with an eye for linking opportunities, function combinations, and the need for urban transition, are necessary to deal with the underground in a sustainable manner. Roads offer a promising opportunity to realize underground water buffers in urban areas in a spatially efficient and sustainable manner. Now that various Dutch municipalities are experimenting with various forms of underground water buffers in roads, it turns out – however- that professionals are struggling to make the right choices due to a lack of insight and practical examples. Knowledge on the stability, (cost) effectiveness, sustainability, contribution to flood and drought control, potential for use within the heavily occupied urban underground, and urban scalability and transferability is missing here. Through practice-oriented research, the project ‘Roads as urban water buffers’ (2021-2023) provides insight into how water buffering roads (can) function in practice. Through field-research in various Dutch cities and municipalities we study, first of all, the stability, hydraulic and hydrological functioning, and sustainability of water buffering roads. Through MKBA-analyses we quantify, secondly, the cost-effectiveness. Through focus group discussions we identify, thirdly, the possibilities and obstacles with regards to the process of design, implementation, management and maintenance, as well as scalability and transferability of design and practice. Through GIS-analyses we develop, finally, an Opportunities-Atlas showcasing the potential for roads as urban water buffers in urbanized contexts. Within this presentation we share some of our first results and discuss ways forward.
