A comprehensive study on stormwater management issues in Berlin is out

28 February 2024

A new paper has been published as part of the Biodiversa+ funded project NICHES in the open access journal Nature-Based Solutions. It’s exploring combined sewer networks, climate change and NBS for urban water management in Berlin.

NICHES members Tom Wild, Gregory Fuchs and McKenna Davis have joined efforts to conduct research that addresses key challenges faced by cities, researchers and water industry stakeholders.

To understand stormwater management issues and associated themes in Berlin the team has identified and reviewed a great number of existing publications. This process has resulted in developing questions for semi-structured interviews. In the next step, they have interviewed local stakeholders to explore and analyse their first-hand perspectives on key principles, definitions, topics, components, conditions and desired outcomes.

The main highlights from the study and this article are:

  • Pollution impacts from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are increasing with climate change.

  • Interest in measures of success for future responses accompanies growing awareness of impacts.

  • Stakeholder interviews and literature highlight the need for revised impact assessment protocols.

  • Indicators developed to assess nature-based solutions can be applied in considering CSO impacts.

  • Existing metrics based on numbers of overflow events and volumes alone are no longer sufficient.

Read the full article here.

***

Follow NICHES on Twitter and LinkedIn.