Urban Resilience: The Optimization of Sustainable Urban Stormwater Management

With increasing urbanization and intensifying climate change impacts, an increasing amount of impermeable surfaces is resulting in surface stormwater runoff that overwhelms existing stormwater drainage systems. In response to the subsequent and urgent need for sustainable cities, there is a growing body of research on an increasingly popular urban planning initiative: sustainable urban stormwater management or ‘low impact development’. In this work, we expand on this discussion by investigating the stormwater resilience of The University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus and the effectiveness of low impact development practices in increasing the resilience to climate change impacts. Specifically, the study examines various low impact development controls, including green roofs, rain gardens, and permeable pavements, evaluating their performance in managing stormwater runoff and reducing flood risk. The study used a rainfall-runoff analysis, employing a stormwater management modelling software (SWMM 5.2) to simulate projected storm events under a moderate climate change scenario. The analysis indicates that a combination of permeable pavements and rain gardens are the most effective low impact development controls to enhance the stormwater resilience of UBC’s campus. This supports existing research that low impact development can increase the infiltration of stormwater into the ground, thus reducing stormwater runoff volumes and subsequent flooding events. The study concludes that low impact development is a promising urban planning initiative to enhance urban resilience to climate change impacts, and emphasizes the need for further research to optimize the design and implementation of low impact development controls.