Drainage systems are an essential part of any city’s water management. In particular, sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) have become increasingly important in water sensitive cities, as they have the ability to store and attenuate surface water, and the capability to treat runoff. The implementation of SuDS requires multiple areas, including planning frameworks, engineering designs, construction practices, maintenance processes, community buy-in and ownership agreement, working cohesively and aligning.
To understand this alignment, as well as building an evidence base on the implementation and management of UK SuDS, STREAMer Peter Melville-Shreeve created a questionnaire to 50,000 industry professionals, which was distributed by the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. The findings from this suggested that whilst SuDS are beginning to become the norm, the ‘harder’ solutions are still much more commonplace. On top of that, design and construction remain weakly regulated, and the legal framework of SuDS ownership and maintenance is lacking and unclear. The expert practitioners supported the need for a single method of adoption, which would be coordinated by the local authority. They also suggested that there should be policy changes making SuDS mandatory, as their benefits are clear and this would speed up the rate at which the change happens across the UK.
If the results of this survey are taken into account and supported by policy makers, there is the possibility for SuDS to become the norm, and help water sensitive systems in their water management.
No comments:
Post a Comment