Green Water Infrastructure I – Sustainable Urban Stormwater Management

Urbanisation in India has been progressing at a very fast rate. The nation has been a witness to various unfortunate incidents of severe urban flooding in various parts of the country. Incidents like water logging, degradation of urban streams and pollution of groundwater resources are quite regular and common in all urban areas, which besides causing a lot of inconvenience to urban population in general, also result in damage to public property and raise multiple health issues. There is a strong need to understand, develop and implement sustainable stormwater management practices, which can effectively reduce the instances of flooding, water pollution and also reduce pressure on the sewerage network besides improving groundwater recharge, local ambience and biodiversity. The central theme behind Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) or Water Sensitive Urban design (WSUD) is to try to understand natural processes and simulate or reproduce them well integrated with the existing urban systems. This is quite antithetical to the principle of current drainage systems, which considers stormwater as an unwanted entity, which the systems want to quickly get rid of, rather than considering it as a prime resource. The field oriented practical methods of “Sustainable Stormwater Management” as used world over require a wider dissemination to the Indian audience, so as to generate awareness and facilitate their ground level implementation in the future so as to develop urban centres having sustainability as the core paradigm. The proposed academic program intends to bring academics, researchers and practitioners together for brainstorming on the above stated topic and interaction with the internationally and nationally acclaimed experts through lectures, case studies and hands-on tutorial and practical sessions.