Nature-Based Solutions and Real-Time Control: Challenges and Opportunities

Nature-based solutions (NBS) as green infrastructures to urban drainage are an effective mitigation strategy both in terms of quantity and quality of runoff. Real-time control (RTC) can complement both flood mitigation and improvement of water quality by controlling elements of the drainage and sewage system. This study assessed the improvement opportunities with RTC of three NBS-related techniques commonly applied in urban drainage with different spatial scales: green roof, bioretention and detention basin and the remaining challenges to integrate both methods. Additionally, our investigations showed that the main difficulties reported involve the planning and monitoring stages of the RTC system. All of the studied devices can benefit from RTC. It is possible to observe that, despite the good results reported in the literature, the application of RTC to NBS studies on urban drainage are very recent. There are several opportunities that can be explored to optimize the performance.