This CIENS-report sums up the main findings from the project “Cultural heritage and water management in urban planning” (Urban WATCH), financed by the Research Council of Norway through the MILJØ2015 programme, and cofunded by the Directorate for Cultural Heritage in Norway (Riksantikvaren) and the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU). The project started up in 2012 and ended in 2015.
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Climate change and urbanization will increase the frequency and magnitude of urban flooding and water quality problems in many regions of the world. In coastal and delta areas like The Netherlands and the Philippines, where urbanization is often high, there has been an increase in the adoption of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS). SUDS are installed around the world with the expectation to reduce urban flooding and reduce the pollution impact on receiving waters. Most cities in Asia are starting to implement SUDS as their strategy to make their cities sustainable and resilient.The combination of SUDS with appropriate wastewater treatment and management systems have the potential to be multifunctional in alleviating flood run-off, improving water quality, alleviating heat stress and as a source for reusing the stormwater and wastewater.Since the earliest SUDS are implemented in Europe decades ago it is advised to use the lessons learnt in this process. International knowledge exchange is promoted in projects as IWASTO where several organisations from the Philippines and The Netherlands join forces on a specific region as the Pateros riverin Manila with the aim to minimise the pollution impact on this receiving water. The first findings of this project related to storm water and wastewater management are presented in this paper. In this stage of the project high level support models that map the challenges in the city (such as flooding and heatstress) arevaluable tools for implementing cost effective sustainable drainage for improving water quality.
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Fresh water systems are rapidly changing and water quality is deteriorating as a result of climate change. Aquatic drones can help us understand these changes - which will be key to tackling water-related challenges ahead.The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.
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The European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) encourages water managers to implement active stakeholder involvement to achieve sustainable water management. However, the WFD does not describe in detail how member states should operationalize participation. The need for local experience and local understanding of collaborative governance (co-governance) processes remains. The WaterCoG project evaluated 11 local pilot schemes. Building on the participatory, qualitative evaluation of pilot schemes from Sweden, United Kingdom, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Germany, the authors take a closer look at how co-governance can improve water governance, how water managers can make best use of tools and knowledge, and how they can improve process designs. The results reflect how social learning and successful co-governance are linked. Social learning as a shared understanding of complex ecosystem and water-management issues can be supported with active stakeholder involvement and citizen science. As such, in co-governance processes, stakeholders need technical access to data and knowledge and a shared process memory. This enables them to develop a shared understanding and facilitates bringing together competing interests and finding new solutions. Participatory tools became part of successful processes by building trust and knowledge based on commitment. However, proficient process design and facilitation make these tools more effective.
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Rapid changes in the urban environment due to growth puts the urban water cycle out of balance, hence, affecting other surface and subsurface processes, such as subsidence and surface water management.Subsidence of the ground is causing risk and hazard, as well as unexpected costs. This newly, November 2018, launched tool InSARNorge is Open Access and part of the Copernicus program.In a recent study (Venvik et al. submitted) datasets from InSAR satellites showing subsidence are combined with data from flood modelling in two different analytical methods using ArcGIS tools to develop a risk assessment map for areas most prone to the combination of both flooding and subsidence. Applying usercentred principles, this work focuses on methods for risk assessment maps as a support tool to locate areas where mitigation of subsidence and adaptation for surface water management will be most efficient and measures can be implemented. The results of the methods for risk assessment maps show that one of the methods give significant results compared to the other method. Such method will be a helpful tool for decision-makers when prioritizing areas for measures such as Sustainable urban Drainage Systems (SuDS).The study is related to the JPI Water funded project INXCES (www.inxces.eu).
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BACKGROUND: Increasing evidence indicates the potential benefits of restricted fluid management in critically ill patients. Evidence lacks on the optimal fluid management strategy for invasively ventilated COVID-19 patients. We hypothesized that the cumulative fluid balance would affect the successful liberation of invasive ventilation in COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).METHODS: We analyzed data from the multicenter observational 'PRactice of VENTilation in COVID-19 patients' study. Patients with confirmed COVID-19 and ARDS who required invasive ventilation during the first 3 months of the international outbreak (March 1, 2020, to June 2020) across 22 hospitals in the Netherlands were included. The primary outcome was successful liberation of invasive ventilation, modeled as a function of day 3 cumulative fluid balance using Cox proportional hazards models, using the crude and the adjusted association. Sensitivity analyses without missing data and modeling ARDS severity were performed.RESULTS: Among 650 patients, three groups were identified. Patients in the higher, intermediate, and lower groups had a median cumulative fluid balance of 1.98 L (1.27-7.72 L), 0.78 L (0.26-1.27 L), and - 0.35 L (- 6.52-0.26 L), respectively. Higher day 3 cumulative fluid balance was significantly associated with a lower probability of successful ventilation liberation (adjusted hazard ratio 0.86, 95% CI 0.77-0.95, P = 0.0047). Sensitivity analyses showed similar results.CONCLUSIONS: In a cohort of invasively ventilated patients with COVID-19 and ARDS, a higher cumulative fluid balance was associated with a longer ventilation duration, indicating that restricted fluid management in these patients may be beneficial. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov ( NCT04346342 ); Date of registration: April 15, 2020.
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Triggered by recent flood catastrophes and increasing concerns about climate change, scientists as well as policy-makers increasingly call for making long-term water policies to enable a transformation towards flood resilience. A key question is how to make these long-term policies adaptive so that they are able to deal with uncertainties and changing circumstances. The paper proposes three conditions for making long-term water policies adaptive, which are then used to evaluate a new Dutch water policy approach called 'Adaptive Delta Management'. Analysing this national policy approach and its translation to the Rotterdam region reveals that Dutch policy-makers are torn between adaptability and the urge to control. Reflecting on this dilemma, the paper suggests a stronger focus on monitoring and learning to strengthen the adaptability of long-term water policies. Moreover, increasing the adaptive capacity of society also requires a stronger engagement with local stakeholders including citizens and businesses.
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Urbanisation and climate change have an effect on the water balance in our cities resulting in challenges as flooding, droughts and heatstress. Implementation of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS) can help to restore the water balance in cities by storing and infiltrating stormwater into the subsurface to minimise flooding, restoration of groundwater tables to prevent droughts, lowering temperatures by evapotranspiration to fight heatstress. Urban planners and otherstakeholders in municipalities and water authorities struggle with implementing SuDS at locations where infiltration of water seems challenging. Questions arise as: can you infiltrate in countries as The Netherlands with parts under sea level, high groundwater table and low permeable soil? Can you infiltrate in Norway with low permeable or impermeable bedrock and frozen ground most of theyear? How do you find space to implement SuDS in the dense urban areas of Bucharest? These questions are answered by researchers of the JPI Water funded project INovations for eXtreme Climatic Events (INXCES).To answer the question on ‘can we infiltrate stormwater under worse case conditions?’, testing of the hydraulic capacity take place at rainwater gardens in Norway (Bergen and Trondheim) and (bio)swales in the low lying parts of The Netherlands. The first results show that even under these ‘extreme’ hydraulic circumstances the hydraulic capacity (or empty time) is sufficient to infiltratemost of the stormwater throughout the year.INXCES exchanged researchers on an international level, shared research results with stakeholders and sets up guidelines for design, implementation and maintenance of SuDS to promote the implementation of sustainable water management systems throughout the world.One of the tools used to promote SuDS is www.climatescan.nl, an open source online map application that provides an easy-to-access database of international project information in the field of urban resilience and climate adaptation. The tool is able to map several sustainable urban drainage systems as has been done for Norway, The Netherlands, Romania and other countries in the world.The tool is used for engagement with stakeholders within EU projects as INXCES and WaterCoG and resulted in international knowledge exchange on infiltration of stormwater under extreme climate and geohydrolic circumstances.
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Electrohydrodynamic atomization (EHDA) is a technique which uses the influence of strong electric fields to manipulate the break-up of a liquid, pumped through a capillary nozzle, into droplets. In this work, an extended description of a specific high flow EHDA mode, known as the simple-jet mode, is presented. In it, a review of different works published about the mode is presented as well as results about the droplet population generated with varicose and whipping break-up using water as the atomized liquid. Additionally, experiments were conducted to investigate whether such atomization method could be used to improve the efficiency of droplet inair evaporation, using a single effect evaporation chamber coupled with a EHDA multinozzle system functioning as a shower head. The liquid used in these experiments was a solution of water and NaCl (35 g L−1) to simulate sea water average concentrations. The results have shown that, the manipulation of the droplet diameter, droplet size distribution and spray angle, provided by EHDA, could improve the droplet evaporation efficiency by up to 40% when combinedwith, e.g. forced convection and higher inlet temperatures.
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Recent years have seen a global rise in the failure of tailings dams. Studies investigating the causes of slope failure often recognise high intensity rainfall events to significantly contribute to liquefaction, erosion and overtopping. This study aims to investigate the influence of alternative physical and geohydrological processes that, under tension saturation conditions, contribute to slope instability in tailings dams. It has been suggested that the generation of transient pressure wave mechanisms by high intensity rainfall events, surface ponding and wetting front advancement result in the formation of an induced pressure head that triggers the mobilization of pre-event water. In order to quantify these physical processes, this study included the analysis of rapid transmission conditions in a silica fines mix, with similar physical and hydraulic characteristics as platinum tailings. A tall leak-proof soil column, containing the soil sample compacted to in-situ dry bulk density, was fitted with seven observation ports. Each port consisted of a pore air pressure probe, a mini tensiometer and a time domain reflectometry probe. After set-up and initial stabilisation, three separate artificial high intensity rainfall events were applied to the surface. Monitoring of hydraulic state variables was recorded at thirty second intervals by automatic logging, thereby enabling the analysis of measured outcomes. Observations showed instant spikes in pore air pressure ahead of the wetting front, as well as a number of delayed responses. The interpretation of lab results led to the conclusion that pressure diffusion mechanisms throughout the porous medium, could result in the rapid release and mobilisation of previously stagnant antecedent moisture, thereby enabling phreatic levels to rising rapidly and in excess to the amount of surface infiltration. Also, since an increase in pore water pressure is likely to cause a reduction in shear strength, it is suggested that these physical and geohydrological processes could have an adverse impact on the stability of tailings dams.
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