Status of transforming stormwater drainage to a systems approach to urban water cycle management – moving beyond green pilots

ABSTRACT

This investigation was motivated by revision of Australia’s national guide to rainfall run-off and flooding, Australian Rainfall and Runoff (ARR) and systems thinking about the future of urban stormwater management. Reflections on this change process revealed internationally relevant challenges and a need to reframe stormwater drainage as integrated management of the urban water cycle from a design, economic and policy perspective. Advances in stormwater management are mostly represented by demonstration projects and policies for integrated water management. Many different water management philosophies have emerged that are consistent with evolving dominant interests such as water authorities, government agencies and proprietary research consortiums. Substantial progress has been made in defining the challenges and necessary solutions but urban flooding and ecological degradation continues to be an escalating problem. Traditional drainage approaches with bottom of catchment management of quantity and quality remains a default implementation solution. Pathway dependence on past methods, competing ideas and ownership, uncertain perceptions of value and a lack of systems perspective may be a barrier that needs to be overcome by the new ARR. A systems approach is needed for water cycle management that includes stormwater management in urban areas. The insights from this paper will also apply to many other cities outside of Australia.

KEYWORDS:

• Drainage
• stormwater management
• urban water cycle
• Australian Rainfall and Runoff
• systems thinking
• future

Acknowledgements

This discussion paper benefited from the support and guidance provided by Mark Babister and Engineers Australia. The substantial contributions of the editorial panel of Andrew Allan, Andrew King, Stephen Frost, Mike Mouritz, Tony McAlister and Tony Webber in shaping this discussion are gratefully acknowledged. Additional review comments from James Ball and Michael Lennard were also assisted in clarifying the content of this paper. The author gratefully acknowledges the considerable support and intellectual contribution of Steve Rosso who is a fellow editor of the ARR Urban Book. In addition, the thinking underpinning this paper was assisted by Professor Alex Coram on the economics of systems and Dr Christopher Walsh on ecology of streams. Thank you also to the Journal editors and the anonymous reviewers for improving this discussion.