Flood resilience incorporation and application in the context of water sensitive cities

Abstract

Water Sensitive City is a term coined within urban water management representing the interaction between different branches of water science and other domains such as urban planning and design in order to establish liveable cities. Flood resilience is the ability of a system to recover from disturbance and also to retain original functional identity in some form in the face of long-term change. Sustainable systems with respect to water management are mainly dominated by their resilience, which is intrinsic to water sensitive cities and includes social, economic and environmental as well as technical systems, and their interactions. Systems cannot be considered in isolation but as a part of wider aspects of water and urban services and utilities in resilient cities. The growing movement for water sensitive urban design (WSUD) provides inspiration for maximising the value and use of water in urban areas, but so far lacks proper consideration of flood resilience. Synergistic integration between the ongoing knowledge on WSUD with flood resilience framework, can lead to establishing of a new model for water sensitive cities which are flood resilient, dealing with urban flooding in wiser manner while optimising the use of all kind of available resources.

Citation

Republished in part with permission from   Rodriguez, C. S., Ashley, R., Gersonius, B., Pathirana, A., Rijke, J. and Zevenbergen, C. (2013). Flood resilience incorporation and application in the context of water sensitive cities. In: Water Sensitive Urban Design 2013: WSUD 2013. Barton, ACT: Engineers Australia, pp. 375-381.

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