About the research

Cities face serious challenges with aging urban drainage infrastructure. Repeated floods have been linked to insufficient storage capacity in the underground systems collecting rainfall and snowmelt from roofs, roads and green spaces. Sustainable urban drainage solutions (SuDS), capitalizing on natural transport and storage mechanisms, are increasingly considered as options to retro-fit or replace traditional systems. A weak link is that stormwater technologies are sized with respect to short-duration rainfall, despite being equally sensitive to long-duration winter snowmelt and rain-on-snow. Systems’ response to frequent freeze-thaw cycles and rain, characteristic of winter climate in Iceland, has not been tested. This poses a hurdle to successful implementation.

The goal of this research is to characterize winter drainage in complex urban catchments with frequent weather cycles. Surface runoff and infiltration will be measured in the first Icelandic neighbourhood implementing SuDS. Taking a water balance approach, the fate of winter rain and snow will be quantified. Historical winter sewage flow will be analysed in relation to weather in traditional urban catchments. The infiltration performance of swales in winter will be assessed. The results will promote best practices in urban drainage in cold regions.

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