A look to the sustainable draining systems: Criteria of sustainability and successful cases

Abstract

There have been many studies and research that address sustainable drainage urban systems (SUDS), where factors like costs or the zone where a SUDS is to be installed are determinant, so multicriteria studies are important in decision-making. The development of a multidisciplinary approach could in the future serve as a helping tool to support decision, whose purpose would be to guide users in their choice of the most appropriate solution for managing the collection of rainwater. Another key point is to make use of other strategies to accurately define the most appropriate SUDS for a particular location. Modelling for example, considers different factors to simulate real-time rainfall events and evaluate the performance of rainwater collection systems among other low impact development systems. Based on what has been stated above, some successful cases currently performed all over the world were studied, where it is evident that green roofs can retain between 70% and 100% when rainfall is not high and peak reduction on these may reach 83.3%. Concrete and porous asphalt mixtures differ in their behaviour, but even so, they can maintain over time an average permeability between 0.41 cm/s and 0.22 cm/s, and similar values in the reduction of the infiltration capacity of 79.43% and 82.04% respectively.