| Description |
One challenge facing sustainable cities is managing stormwater in urban catchments. Of particular interest is mitigating the negative impacts of urbanization on hydrologic variables to a sustainable level. In this context, "sustainable" could be defined as mimicking the Natural Hydrology (NH) of an urban catchment by implementing Green Infrastructure (GI). To assess nearness to such a level, the concept of Water Budget Restoration Coefficient (WBRC) has been recently introduced. Nevertheless, common stormwater management standards and regulations do not necessarily maintain the NH of a region. They often prioritize site suitability and reduction of runoff volumes. However, a goal could be to achieve overall Ecosystem Services (ES), which encompasses a broader range of benefits. Although studies show GI techniques can significantly contribute to approaching NH and providing ES, no comprehensive methods incorporate multiple hydrological components and reveal compatible types of GI with the NH of a catchment. To introduce a comprehensive GI design approach based on NH nearness, a systematic Multi-Objective Optimization (MOP) framework was developed and is presented in this paper. This framework includes comparison of two different sets of tradeoffs based on two independent optimization sets: (i) the first optimizes candidate GIs in terms of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) and Runoff Volume (RV), and represents common practice, and (ii) the second one optimizes GIs in terms of LCC and WBRC, representing a more comprehensive hydrologic goal. The selected candidate GIs were i) Permeable Pavements (PP), (ii) Green |
