| dc.description.abstract | Cities increasingly face climate-related challenges that require adaptation planning to build urban resilience. In the Netherlands, the risks of flooding caused by extreme rainfall events are a major threat to urban areas, demanding targeted interventions from the planning actors that mitigate such risks. The city of Amsterdam is investing in policies and plans to be a climate-resilient city by 2050, giving a good example of what can be done. A core adaptation strategy in the city is the implementation of rainproofing measures to create a ‘sponge’ effect, absorbing rainwater locally and reducing run-offs. However, the city is still in the early stages of realizing this urban-drainage transformation and needs to implement more projects that contribute to fulfilling the Rainproof goal. This research contributes to achieving the transformation of local urban drainage by investigating the use of Nature-based Solutions (NBS) as an effective adaptation planning strategy against downpours. Furthermore, it approaches NBS planning from a blue and green infrastructure (BGI) perspective for the value of its networked character and the ability to create a hybrid drainage system with the traditional drainage infrastructure. Nature-based solutions can be a valuable component for sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) given their multifunctionality and range of benefits to people and ecosystems, which exceed improving the local drainage.
Amsterdam is the single case study and the main unit of analysis of this research, and two NBS projects are the embedded sub-units of analysis. This study followed a qualitative research strategy, using a multi-method research design to fulfill two objectives: (1) to identify opportunities and challenges for the implementation of NBS for urban drainage in Amsterdam and (2) to explore processes that amplify the implementation of NBS for urban drainage in Amsterdam. The main research question that drives the research is: How can the implementation of nature-based solutions for urban drainage be amplified in Amsterdam?
Framing NBS as sustainability initiatives and proposing their implementation as urban experiments, this research sits at the interface of urban planning, ecological sustainability, water management, and transitions studies. Besides, it applies sustainability transformations theory in the analysis of existing NBS experiments in Amsterdam, proposing a tailored and targeted use of amplification mechanisms to increase NBS implementation, contributing to the Rainproof-city. | |
