The water management of cities has to be changed into a more sustainable direction. At present, urban water systems face a number of problems, such as flooding and pollution due to combined sewer overflows during heavy rainfall, overexploited resources for water supply and drought damage in summer. Climate change will only aggravate these problems. Urban renewal in Rotterdam provides opportunities to implement more sustainable water systems. The transition to a more sustainable situation requires the development of feasible transition scenarios. The project aims at formulating these scenarios based on improved insight into the transformability of the water management system. This by extending LmW project Transitions to more Sustainable Urban Water management (P1002) with transition management expertise from Germany.
The project is aimed at the formulation of transition scenarios for a more sustainable water management in urban areas. From an empirical point of view the project contributes to the transformation of the water systems in the southern part of Rotterdam into a sustainable waterway network.
The local water systems in the city of Rotterdam are vulnerable and face a number of problems related to the climate change: sea level rise and salt intrusion, strongly fluctuating discharge from the river Rhine. An other problem is the poor water quality, caused by sewer overflows during heavy rain fall, diffuse pollution and stagnant water.
In order to solve the problems related to water quality and quantity, a transition of the urban water management is necessary, not only in Rotterdam but in many Dutch cities. Two present LmW-projects deal with this subject, namely:
Transitions to more Sustainable Urban Water management (P 1002), Improved building site preparation (P 2048).
This project is an extension of the two projects mentioned above and has the objective of creating transition strategies that are acceptable for all stakeholders and technically feasible.
The project has three work packages:
1. Analyzing the water system (physical and management)
2. Scenario building
3. Analyzing transformability .
Results:
Clear analysis of the water management system in the southern part of Rotterdam, General framework for the analysis of transformation capacity, Scenarios for the first steps towards the future plan for integral water management Rotterdam Water city 2035. Final Results:
Transition to a sustainable water management in the urban area of Rotterdam and other Dutch cities. |
