Brief summary

SWITCH is an action research programme, implemented and co-funded by the European Union and a cross-disciplinary team of 33 partners from 15 countries around the world.

SWITCH aims to bring about a paradigm shift in urban water management away from existing ad hoc solutions to urban water management and towards a more coherent and integrated approach. The vision of SWITCH is for sustainable urban water management in the 'City of the Future'.

Stormwater is a valuable resource, and its management should play a central role in any sustainable urban water management plan. Although there is increasing interest in the use of sustainable urban drainage systems (particularly in Northern European countries and the USA), little consideration has been paid to analysing the ability of these systems (either singly or in combination) to cope with extreme events or under changing socioeconomic conditions. In addition, the use of best management practices (BMPs)/sustainable drainage systems (SUDS) in Southern European and developing countries remains a relatively new area of research, where initial studies have suggested that the transfer of this technology is not necessarily a straightforward process, particularly with regard to the environmental impact and operation of these systems under different climatic and socio-economic conditions.

The areas of stormwater management that SWITCH has been researching include:

• Technological options for stormwater control under conditions of uncertainty
• Decision-making processes for effective urban stormwater management
• Environmental change studies for stormwater control and reuse options

Key outputs of the work include:

• COFAS
• SUDS-LOC
• Economic assessment of floods
• Risk assessment approach for prioritising stormwater control strategies
• Water sensitive urban design manual
• Various reports reviewing e.g. current stormwater control technologies, design guidance, retrofit

Start date

January 2006

Finish date

January 2011

Organisations involved

•University of Abertay, Dundee, United Kingdom
•ARUP, United Kingdom
•AYTO Municipality of Zaragoza, Spain
•University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
•CEDARE Center for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe, Egypt
•CQU Chongqing University, China P.R.
•EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, Switzerland
•ETC-UA Urban Agriculture, Netherlands
•FHH, Hamburg Municipality, Germany
•University of Greenwich, United Kingdom
•HCU HafenCity University Hamburg, Germany
•HUJI Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
•HWE House of Water and Environment, Palestine
•ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, European Secretariat, Germany
•IGSNRR Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources Research, China P.R.
•IPES Promocion del desarrollo sostenible, Peru
•IPS Ingeniergesellschaft Sieker, Germany
•IRC International Water and Sanitation Center, Netherlands
•IWMI International Water Management Institute, Ghana
•KNUST Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
•University of Lodz, Poland
•MEKOROT Israel National Water Company, Israel
•Middlesex University, United Kingdom
•NTUA National Technical University of Athens, Greece
•PBH Prefeitura de Belo Horizonte, Brasil
•TUB Technical University Berlin, Germany
•TUHH Technical University Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
•UFMG Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brasil
•UNAL Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
•UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Netherlands
•UNIVALLE Universidad del Valle, Colombia
•Wageningen University, Netherlands
•WEDC, Loughborough University, United Kingdom

Contact

Jennifer.chlebek@arup.com

URL

http://switchurbanwater.lboro.ac.uk/