Develop a monitoring scheme for the WaterStreet’s living lab

By Alexandra Vyrini, with supervisor Dr.ir. M.M. Rutten

Climate and land use change pose a threat to urban environments as they are positively correlated with the increase in extreme phenomena. Sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) can provide an alternative way to reduce the discharge of water to the stormwater sewer system by increasing the permeability of the pavement and creating storage underneath.

Although these sustainable urban drainage systems sound very promising, they are often facing many obstacles before full-scale implementation. Lack of public awareness and the inertia of system’s change due to governance, regulations and institutional constraints put a brake towards the implementation of innovative solutions. In this regard, WaterStreet (https://thegreenvillage.org/project/waterstraat/) is a living lab that tries to reduce the effect of the factors mentioned before, by demonstrating and testing new solutions towards a sustainable urban stormwater management, without the involvement of the government. The aim of WaterStreet is to make the jump to the market smaller.

From a technological perspective the reliability of SUDS’s performance is regarded the most important factor for end users to incorporate them in city planning. Maintenance of the systems, underlying soil type and vegetation are some of the factors that can affect the long-term performance of SUDS. Monitoring can be an important tool to investigate the performance of new SUDS before pilot implementation reducing the uncertainty for end users. It is therefor proposed to develop a monitoring scheme for the WaterStreet’s living lab that will enhance the knowledge on how these systems work in real live situations. A parallel study will be performed in order to include the need of data for simulation purposes. Simulation of those SUDS can be an important tool for city planning further accelerating the possibility of implementation of SUDS.