Design and implementation
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Introduction
The design and implementation of assets and systems within a water sensitive city influences their performance, cost effectiveness and longevity. Asset design should consider how the assets will be constructed, maintained and renewed.
Water sensitive cities typically contain green infrastructure including biofilters, raingardens, and green facades and walls. Wastewater recycling and resource recovery are also important solutions for water sensitive cities.
Our research on design and implementation has identified some interesting findings, for example:
- Benefit cost analysis can be used to compare various design options to find the configuration that delivers the greatest benefits for the resources used. (Benefit: Cost Analysis and strategic decision making for water-sensitive cities)
- Creating linear parks to manage stormwater can help restore natural hydrological flows. (Analysing water sensitive urban design options)
- Designing and implementing effective and robust water management solutions requires collaboration between stakeholders such as water utilities, government departments, and professional organisations. (Toward effective change in urban water policy: the role of collaborative governance and cross-scale integration)
- Water sensitive medium density housing designs have better water, urban heat and architectural and open space design characteristics and performance than conventional medium density development. (Infill typologies catalogue)
- Biofilter design and operational conditions affect their overall pollutant removal capacity. Biofilters that include a soil media with a low nutrient content and a submerged zone, containing a carbon source, are effective at removing nutrients. (Biofilters and wetlands for stormwater treatment and harvesting)
- Key factors in the community acceptance of roadside biofilters include attachment to the location, landscape care and maintenance, satisfaction and affordability (Designing raingardens for community acceptance)
Benefit cost analysis
- Benefit: Cost Analysis and strategic decision making for water-sensitive cities
- Review of existing Benefit: Cost Analysis (BCA) tools relevant to water-sensitive cities,
Urban form design
- Infill typologies catalogue
- Flexible adaptation planning process for urban adaptation in Melbourne
- Analysing water sensitive urban design options
- Context specific adaptation grammars for climate adaptation in urban areas
- Toward effective change in urban water policy: the role of collaborative governance and cross-scale integration
- Determine the microclimatic influence of harvesting solutions and WSUD at the micro-scale. Presented as: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
- Can we model the implementation of water sensitive urban design in evolving cities?
- The relationship between housing and heat wave resilience in older people
- UK sustainable drainage systems: past, present and future
- Impacts of WSUD solutions on human thermal comfort
- A critical review of integrated urban water modelling – Urban drainage and beyond
- Incorporation and application of resilience in the context of water-sensitive urban design: linking European and Australian perspectives
- Modelling interactions between lot-scale decentralised water infrastructure and urban form – a case study on infiltration systems
- Designing urban cool pools
- Water-sensitive urban design: opportunities for the UK
- Green cities and micro‐climate – interim report
- Development of an integrated software tool for strategic planning and conceptual design of water sensitive cities
- VCCCAR report: A multi-scale assessment of urban heating in Melbourne during an extreme heat event and policy approaches for adaptation
- Liveability and the water sensitive city
Designing natural systems
- Multi-scale characterisation of stream nutrient and carbon dynamics in sandy near coastal catchments of south-western Australia,
- Assessment of options to improve amenity and performance of the Roselea Boulevard Compensation Basin
- Dual-mode stormwater-greywater biofilters: The impact of alternating water sources on treatment performance
- Flow-mediated movement of freshwater catfish, Tandanus bostocki, in a regulated semi-urban river to inform environmental water releases
- The impact of urbanisation and stormwater management practices on water balances and nutrient pathways in areas of high groundwater: a review of recent literature
- Community perceptions of the implementation and adoption of WSUD for stormwater systems
- Integrated multi-functional urban water systems: key findings from project C4.1
- Stormwater Biofilters as Barriers against Campylobacter jejuni, Cryptosporidium Oocysts and Adenoviruses; Results from a Laboratory Trial
- Green walls for greywater reuse: Understanding the role of media on pollutant removal
- Designing living walls for greywater treatment
- Storm event-scale nutrient attenuation in constructed wetlands experiencing a Mediterranean climate: A comparison of a surface flow and hybrid surface-subsurface flow system
- Phosphorus Fate and Dynamics in Greywater Biofiltration Systems
- Performance of two urban stormwater biofilters in an area with seasonally high groundwater
- Stormwater nutrient attenuation in a constructed wetland with alternating surface and subsurface flow pathways: Event to annual dynamics
- Effect of hydrological variability on the performance of stormwater constructed wetlands: Assessment of the gaps in current modelling approaches
- A multi-functional, multi-compartment constructed wetland to support urban waterway restoration
- Designing raingardens for community acceptance
- Performance assessment of Wharf St Constructed Wetland 2009-2014
- Performance assessment of the Anvil Way Compensation Basin living stream: 2004-2013
- Flow-regime management at the urban land-parcel scale: test of feasibility
- Revisiting land use classification and spatial aggregation for modelling integrated urban water systems
- Evaluation of sustainable electron donors for nitrate removal in different water media
- The impacts of harvesting solutions and WSUD on evaporation and the water balance and feedbacks to urban hydrology and stream ecology
- Stormwater pollutant runoff: A stochastic approach
- E. coli removal in laboratory scale stormwater biofilters: Influence of vegetation and submerged zone
- Innovation for rapid denitrification in biofiltration systems
- Biofilters and wetlands for stormwater treatment and harvesting
- Development of a Transport and Fate Model for Organic Micropollutants at a Stormwater Biofilter Site
- Improving urban stream condition by redirecting sediments: A review of associated contaminants
- Stable copper-zeolite filter media for bacteria removal in stormwater
- Removal of E. coli from urban stormwater using antimicrobial-modified filter media
- Survival of Escherichia coli in stormwater biofilters
- Long-term phosphorus accumulation in stormwater biofiltration systems at the field scale
- Stormwater biofiltration – the challenges of inorganic and organic nitrogen removal
- Assessing nature of clogging in zeolite based stormwater filters
- A two-dimensional model of hydraulic performance of stormwater infiltration systems
- Source-control stormwater management for mitigating the impacts of urbanisation on baseflow: A review
- Public perceptions of freshwater wetlands in Victoria, Australia
- Public aesthetic preferences to inform sustainable wetland management in Victoria, Australia
- A Preliminary Model on E. coli Removal in Stormwater Biofilters
- Application of a space-time stochastic model for downscaling future rainfall projections
- Verifying a stormwater biofiltration model
- Pathogen and indicator microorganism removal in field scale stormwater biofilters
- Water retention by raingardens: implications for local-scale soil moisture and water fluxes
- The stormwater retention performance of rainwater tanks at the landparcel scale
Designing for resilience
- Simulating flood risk under non-stationary climate and urban development conditions – Experimental setup for multiple hazards and a variety of scenarios
- Structuring climate adaptation through multiple perspectives: Framework and case study on flood risk management
- Appropriate flood adaptation: Adapting in the right way, in the right place and at the right time
- Adaptation mainstreaming for achieving flood resilience in cities
- Retrofitting urban drainage capacity to cope with change: A case study for Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe Basin change in Ho Chi Minh city
- Urban retention basin in developing city: from theoretical effectiveness to practical feasibility
- Making the implicit, explicit: time for renegotiating the urban water supply hydrosocial contract?
Water network design
- Sensing-Based Leak Quantification Techniques in Water Distribution Systems
- Designing sensor networks for leak detection in water pipeline systems
- Discovering water use activities for smart metering
Wastewater network design
- Low temperature treatment of domestic wastewater by purple phototrophic bacteria: Performance, activity, and community
- Sulfide and methane production in sewer sediments: Field survey and model evaluation
- SeweX modelling to support corrosion and odour management in sewers
- Corrosion and odor management in sewer systems
- Feasibility of sulfide control in sewers by reuse of iron rich drinking water treatment sludge
- Stratified microbial structure and activity in sulfide- and methane-producing anaerobic sewer biofilms
- A kinetic model based on utilization of purple phototrophic bacteria for nutrient recovery
- Reducing sewer corrosion through integrated urban water management
- Phototrophic bacteria for nutrient recovery from domestic wastewater
Research application
The CRCWSC’s research on design and implementation has been applied to:
- assess the performance of a constructed wetland to identify potential design improvements. Recommended refinements include simplifying wetland flow paths and water level control operations. (Eric Singleton Constructed Wetland: Monitoring and assessment for optimal stormwater treatment performance)
- identify flood resilience initiatives in areas such as Normal Creek in Brisbane, and Arden Macaulay and Elwood in Melbourne
- inform preliminary stages of planning for urban development by scoping opportunities to optimise water sensitive cities outcomes in greenfield areas such as Townsville, Ocean Reef Marina, Officer, Ripley Valley, Aquarevo, Tonsley, as well as brownfield sites at Sydenham to Bankstown, Brabham, Canning, Batavia Coast and Fishermans Bend, and provide recommendations to assist implementation.
- Quantifying sediment export from an urban development site: Heron Park
- Eric Singleton Constructed Wetland: Monitoring and assessment for optimal stormwater treatment performance
- An interdisciplinary and catchment approach to enhancing urban flood resilience: a Melbourne case
- Solutions for Norman Creek
- Norman Creek Catchment: Dwelling on Floodscapes
- Arden Macaulay in Transition: Four adaptive design concepts for drainage and flood management
- Arden Macaulay framed through water: Design investigation, Stage 1
- Ideas for Townsville
- Ideas for Ocean Reef Marina
- Ideas for a Water Sensitive Sydenham to Bankstown Urban Renewal Corridor
- Ideas for Brabham
- A new community at Officer case study
- Ideas for Bentley
- Revitalising Canning City Centre: A water sensitive perspective
- Ideas for Batavia Coast Marina Stage 2
- Ideas for Ripley Valley
- Ideas for Aquarevo
- Ideas for Tonsley
- Ideas for Fishermans Bend
- Vision and Transition Strategy for a Water Sensitive Greater Perth – Implementation Plan 2019-2021
- Towards a water sensitive Elwood: a community vision and transition pathways
- Dubbo urban heat island amelioration project
Tools and guidelines
We have developed industry guidance to assist with design and implementation, for example:
- guidelines for the design and implementation of stormwater biofilters (Adoption guidelines for stormwater biofiltration systems: Cities as water supply catchments – sustainable technologies).
- a range of medium density water sensitive housing typologies, supported by information regarding their water sensitive performance with comparison to current urban development types (Infill typologies catalogue)
- A series of tools to undertake benefit cost analysis of water sensitive projects, including consideration of non-monetary benefits (Benefit Cost Analysis Tool and Value Tool).
- Guidance on the placement of street trees for the largest cooling benefits for people (Trees for a cool city) and other design elements including ways to use stormwater to water street trees (Designing for a cool city – Guidelines for passively irrigated landscapes).
- A guideline and set of factsheets to guide the repair or design of a living stream site on a flowing urban waterway (Riparian design guidelines to inform the ecological repair of urban waterways and Improving the ecological function of urban waterways: A compendium of factsheets)
- A guide for monitoring the performance of WSUD elements in areas with high groundwater which includes case studies demonstrating application.
- A guideline to help design and implement green facades and green walls (Adoption guidelines for green treatment technologies).
- A framework to help guide behaviour change programs (Guide to promoting water sensitive behaviours).
- Guidance on approaches to urban stormwater management that support the transition of urban areas to Water Sensitive Cities and Towns (blueprint2012 and blueprint2013).
- Infill typologies catalogue
- Benefit Cost Analysis Tool
- Value Tool
- Designing for a cool city – Guidelines for passively irrigated landscapes
- Trees for a cool city: Guidelines for optimised tree placement
- Improving the ecological function of urban waterways: A compendium of factsheets
- Riparian design guidelines to inform the ecological repair of urban waterways
- A guide for monitoring the performance of WSUD elements in areas with high groundwater
- How clean is raw stormwater? Understanding the hazards
- Why choose stormwater biofiltration?
- Adoption guidelines for stormwater biofiltration systems: Cities as water supply catchments – sustainable technologies
- Adoption guidelines for stormwater biofiltration systems – Summary report
- Adoption guidelines for green treatment technologies
- Guide to promoting water sensitive behaviours
- blueprint2012
- blueprint2013
Infographics
Infographic 1
Water sensitive terrace/townhouse development
(London et al., 2020. Infill typologies catalogue. Melbourne, Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, p. 15.)
Infographic 2
Cross section of tree placement for medium streets (Coutts A and Tapper N, 2017. Trees for a Cool City: Guidelines for optimised tree placement. Melbourne Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, p. 18.)
Infographic 3
Essential components for stormwater biofilters (Payne et al., 2015. Adoption guidelines for stormwater biofiltration systems – summary report. Melbourne, Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, p. 6.)
Infographic 4
Riparian attributes and the aquatic and terrestrial ecological functions they support. (Beesley et al., 2017. Riparian design guidelines to inform the ecological repair of urban waterways. Melbourne, Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, p. 9.)
Infographic 5
Concept of living walls for greywater recycling in domestic premises
(Fowdar et al., 2018. Adoption guidelines for green treatment technologies. Melbourne, Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities,
p. 10.)
Infographic 6
Overall approach to behaviour change
(Dean A and Smith L, 2016. Guide to promoting water sensitive behaviours. Melbourne, Australia: CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, p. 4.)
