Resumen de A multicriteria scheme for identifying potential areas for Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems in urban and rural areas
A. Suárez Inclán, Jorge Roces García, Cristina Allende Prieto, Carlos Rey Mahía, Luis Ángel Sañudo Fontaneda
Cities are being affected more intensely and closely in time by the consequences of climate change, these being very varied, including those related to the increased probability of suffering strong episodes of flooding and diffuse pollution. In addition, in recent decades there has been an increase of urban areas, the problem is that this urban development has not been carried out from a point of view that takes into account sustainability in the management of runoff in cities. This has caused an alteration in today’s cities of the natural hydrological cycle that existed prior to urban development, mainly due to the large amount of built waterproof areas. This effect, alongside the inefficiency of conventional urban drainage infrastructures, modifies quantitatively and qualitatively the natural flows of the hydrological cycle and, consequently, generates increasing events of flooding in urban environments, deteriorating water quality and causing other negative environmental, social and economic consequences. Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) are one of the most widely used techniques to improve urban resilience. Their application allows urban areas to be successfully adapted to current and future climate scenarios and unpredictable changes. However, little research has been carried out on the development of transversal methodologies that allow the implementation of these techniques from an integrative urban planning angle. Likewise, the Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) philosophy, which serves as the framework for the design pillars of the SUDS, is not implemented on a global scale throughout the city. The objective of this work is to develop a multicriteria methodology that collects the engineering parameters for controlling the volume and contamination of runoff, as well as, the social and biodiversity elements that contributes towards a holistic urban planning for urban water management. The methodology is being implemented to the city of Gijón (Spain) with a population of nearly three hundred thousand inhabitants living in an area of approximately 200 km2, divided in consolidated urban areas and rural. The results include a multiscale identification of priority urban and rural areas for SUDS implementation. According functional, environmental, social and economic aspects. In addition, the results allowed the selection of the most suitable SUDS types for the potential areas identified, in order to help increase the urban resilience.
