Water Sources

Scale_Urban/landscapeLevel_HowLevel_DetailedFoundation_AdaptationFoundation_Restorative
Written By Ioannis Lykouras

ENVIRONMENT

Recorded by Sofie Pelsmakers, images by Essi Nisonen

KEY READINGS

  • Disaster by Choice: How Our Actions turn Natural Hazards into Catastrophes, Kellman Ilan, Oxford University Press

  • Water – at the centre of the climate crisis, UN, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/water

  • Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC

  • Retrofitting for Flood Resilience: A Guide to Building & Community Design, Barsley, RIBA

  • Designing Sustainable and Resilient Cities: Small Interventions for Stronger Urban Food-Water-Energy Management, Coulter, Melis, Brown, Taylor & Francis

  • Aquatecture: Buildings and cities designed to live and work with water, Barker & Coutts, RIBA

  • Basics Designing with Water, Lohrer & Bott, Birkhauser

  • Urban Blue Spaces: Planning and Design for Water, Health and Well-Being, Bell et al, Taylor & Francis

  • African Water Cities, Adeyemi & Lettieri, NAi

  • The State of the World's Water: An Atlas of Our Most Vital Resource, Black, New Internationalist Publications

  • Design for Flooding: Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design for Resilience to Climate Change, Watson & Adams, John Wiley & Sons

  • The Environmental Design Pocketbook, by Pelsmakers, S., RIBA

  • Designing for the Climate Emergency, a Guide for Architecture Students by Pelsmakers, S., Donovan, E., Hoggard, A., Kozminska, U., RIBA

INSPIRATIONAL BUILT EXAMPLES

  • Baca Architects, Amphibious House, Buckinghamshire, UK

  • Turenscape, Mangrove Park sponge city, China

  • Solrodgard Climate and Environmental Park, Denmark

  • De Urbanisten – Benthemplein Water Square, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

  • Makoko Floating School, Nigeria

WATER SOURCES

Climate change affects water sources and they in turn affect the natural and built environment, for example we already face more frequent and severe drought-related water shortages, with wild-fires and biodiversity loss during periods of drought. We also see aea-level rise and increased flooding from extreme rainfall. Sources of flooding can be tidal, fluvial, pluvial, sewers or from infrastructures. We clearly must work with water rather than against it, and it will become even more important in a changing climate. Strategies include: flood prevention (e.g. retaining and enhancing existing forests and tree cover upland and in urban areas); using suitable site selection (i.e. avoiding building in flood plains or near coastal areas; flood risk management plans and promoting sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) at different scales that catch, retain and cleanse water run-off – e.g. Sponge Cities principles. This also includes restoring sealed surfaces to become permeable, nature based green and blue infrastructures. All of this must be co-developed together with local communities

Ioannis Lykouras
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