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Nature Based Solutions as Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures
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Nature Based Solutions as Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2021) | Viewed by 21648

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Fabio Masi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
IRIDRA Srl, Florence, Italy
Interests: constructed wetlands; treatment wetlands; nature based solutions; sustainable water management; water sensitive urban design; resource recovery oriented sanitation; circular economy; water pollution control
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Anacleto Rizzo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
IRIDRA Srl, Florence, Italy
Interests: sustainable water management; nature-based solutions; green-blue infrastructure; constructed wetland for wastewater treatment; river restoration; sustainable drainage dystems (SuDS); climate change adaptation planning in water sector; ecosystem Services estimation, evaluation, and monetisation
Eng. Martin Regelsberger

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Bureau Regelsberger
Interests: constructed wetlands; treatment wetlands; circular cities; edible cities; edible city solutions; circular economy; integrated urban water management; transformation management
Dr. Fulvio Boano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI), Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, Turin, Italy
Interests: constructed wetlands; green walls; greywater; water supply; surface water-groundwater interactions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Awareness on the effects of the climate change and other key challenges has been constantly rising and greater parts of our global society are finally feeling these topics as a main issue for our future and formulated them into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). In the last years research has taken its steps to provide green solutions in order to reduce the ecological footprint of our cities. Nature based solutions (NBS) are approaches able to provide answers to meet the SDG by adopting Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures. Urban NBS are many (green walls, green roofs, open water bodies, infiltration and evapotranspiration features, etc…). Green walls (or living walls) are vertical gardens attached to a structure along a building’s exterior making room for vegetation growth. Taking green walls as an example, this technology can provide cities with greener areas while reusing the urban grey water and improving urban air quality. Green walls and roofs can even produce food with the water and nutrients available right on site. Urban NBS represent a useful tool for meeting aims of urban sustainability, decreasing water use, protecting cities from the effects of more frequent and stronger floods caused by the increase of extreme climate events, recovering valuable resources. Designing greener cities by boosting the interaction between the technical urban water system plus natural urban water elements (blue assets) and vegetated areas (green and brown assets, where brown is the topsoil layer where water plant roots, soil organisms and organic matter are strictly interacting) is part of a new green revolution that has to include all the sectors of our society.

For this reason we decided to launch a call for papers to disseminate and share findings on similar practices of sustainable water management in addressing problems and opportunities scientifically. Papers are selected by a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, development and application in the wider area of sustainable water management and blue-green-brown aproaches, strongly linked with a new circular economy concept and resources recovery practicies.

Original research papers or critical reviews are invited.

Dr. Fabio Masi
Dr. Anacleto Rizzo
Eng. Martin Regelsberger
Dr. Fulvio Boano
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Nature Based Solutions
  • Living walls
  • Green roofs
  • Nutrients recovery
  • Edible City Solutions
  • Sustainable urban drainage systems
  • Flood mitigation
  • Greywater treatment
  • Storm water harvesting
  • Water recycling
  • Water reuse
  • Sustainable water management
  • Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructure
  • Urban water cycle

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 22922 KiB  
Article
Observation Experiment of Wind-Driven Rain Harvesting from a Building Wall
by Chulsang Yoo, Eunsaem Cho, Munseok Lee and Soeun Kim
Water 2022, 14(4), 603; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14040603 - 16 Feb 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 7237
Abstract
Rainwater harvesting is generally assumed to collect rainwater from the roof or ground. However, this study shows that this structural limitation of rainwater harvesting can be overcome by employing a building wall. The rainfall on a building wall is called wind-driven rain (WDR), [...] Read more.
Rainwater harvesting is generally assumed to collect rainwater from the roof or ground. However, this study shows that this structural limitation of rainwater harvesting can be overcome by employing a building wall. The rainfall on a building wall is called wind-driven rain (WDR), which is the target for the rainwater harvesting addressed in this study. To prove the possibility of WDR harvesting, this study prepared three different gauges to collect the rainwater from a building wall. These gauges are like miniature buildings used to collect the WDR on the building wall inside a storage tank at the bottom. The WDR harvesting gauges were located on the rooftop of the Engineering Building, Korea University, and a total of 15 rainfall events were observed during the rainy season in Korea from June to September 2020. Our analysis of the collected data confirms the significant role of the building wall in rainwater harvesting. For a building height of 0.5 m, the rainwater additionally harvested from the wall was about 40% that from the roof, which became about 70% for the height of 1.0 m and about 90% for the height of 1.5 m. In addition, Cho et al. (2020)’s empirical equation for estimating the WDR is found to be useful for estimating the amount of rainwater harvested from the building wall. The correlation coefficients between the measurements and estimates were estimated to be high as 0.94, 0.92 and 0.91 for building heights of 0.5 m, 1.0 m, and 1.5 m, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature Based Solutions as Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures)
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18 pages, 1373 KiB  
Article
Greening Urban Areas with Decentralized Wastewater Treatment and Reuse: A Case Study of Ecoparque in Tijuana, Mexico
by Denise Garcia, Gabriela Muñoz Meléndez, Armando Arteaga, Lina Ojeda-Revah and Natalie Mladenov
Water 2022, 14(4), 596; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14040596 - 15 Feb 2022
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 7590
Abstract
In rapidly growing urban areas, such as Tijuana, Mexico, the presence of urban green spaces (UGSs) can help stem soil erosion, improve infiltration, slow runoff, decrease flooding, reduce air pollution, and mitigate climate change. In many water-scarce parts of the world, where centralized [...] Read more.
In rapidly growing urban areas, such as Tijuana, Mexico, the presence of urban green spaces (UGSs) can help stem soil erosion, improve infiltration, slow runoff, decrease flooding, reduce air pollution, and mitigate climate change. In many water-scarce parts of the world, where centralized wastewater treatment is not accessible or practical, decentralized wastewater treatment systems (DEWATSs) have the potential to supply the water needed for irrigating UGSs. Here, we first review UGS systems supported by DEWATSs and the water quality guidelines and challenges associated with implementing DEWATSs for urban greening in different countries, including Mexico. We also critically examine the linkages between the lack of UGSs in Tijuana, Mexico, extensive soil erosion, and failing sanitation infrastructure that has led to the infamously poor water quality in the Tijuana River. Tijuana’s Ecoparque Wastewater Treatment Facility, a low-energy, aerobic DEWATS, which collects, treats, and discharges residential sewage for localized landscape irrigation, demonstrates how DEWATSs can meet the water demands for urban greening in rapidly urbanizing cities. The aerobic decentralized treatment using a gravity-fed trickling biofilter resulted in a >85% removal of chemical oxygen demand and dissolved organic carbon. Prior to treatment facility upgrades, there was a ~2 log reduction in total coliform and Escherichia coli and a <20% decrease in ammonia from the influent to final effluent. After the addition of a maturation pond in 2020, the effluent met Mexico standards for irrigation reuse, with a ~4 log reduction in fecal coliforms from the influent to final effluent. Case study results demonstrated the potential for decentralized wastewater treatment to meet effluent standards for landscape irrigation, provide water for urban greening, and prevent pollution in the Tijuana River and other urban waterways. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature Based Solutions as Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures)
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19 pages, 3674 KiB  
Article
Hybrid Approach for Excess Stormwater Management: Combining Decentralized and Centralized Strategies for the Enhancement of Urban Flooding Resilience
by Roberta D’Ambrosio, Antonia Longobardi, Alessandro Balbo and Anacleto Rizzo
Water 2021, 13(24), 3635; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243635 - 17 Dec 2021
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4455
Abstract
Urban sprawl and soil sealing has gradually led to an impervious surface increase with consequences on the enhancement of flooding risk. During the last decades, a hybrid approach involving both traditional storm water detention tanks (SWDTs) and low-impact development (LID) has resulted in [...] Read more.
Urban sprawl and soil sealing has gradually led to an impervious surface increase with consequences on the enhancement of flooding risk. During the last decades, a hybrid approach involving both traditional storm water detention tanks (SWDTs) and low-impact development (LID) has resulted in the best solution to manage urban flooding and to improve city resilience. This research aimed at a modeling comparison between drainage scenarios involving the mentioned hybrid approach (H-SM), with (de)centralized LID supporting SWDTs, and a scenario representative of the centralized approach only involving SWDTs (C-SM). Results highlighted that the implementation of H-SM approaches could be a great opportunity to reduce SWDTs volumes. However, the performances varied according to the typology of implemented LID, their parameterization with specific reference to the draining time, and the rainfall severity. Overall, with the increase of rainfall severity and the decrease of draining time, a decrease of retention performances can be observed with SWDTs volume reductions moving from 100% to 28%. In addition, without expecting to implement multicriteria techniques, a preliminary cost analysis pointed out that the larger investment effort of the (de)centralized LID could be, in specific cases, overtaken by the cost advantages resulting from the reduction of the SWDTs volumes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nature Based Solutions as Urban Blue-Green-Brown Infrastructures)
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