Integrated Strategies for Strengthening Urban Blue-green Infrastructures
Project duration: 11/2018 - 10/2021
Department in change: rewa
Persons in charge:
Dipl.-Ing. Carlo Morandi, M. Sc.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heidrun Steinmetz
Funding: German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), grant number: 01LR1705B1
Project partners:
Universität Stuttgart - Institut für Landschaftsplanung und Ökologie und Institut für Siedlungswasserbau, Wassergüte- und Abfallwirtschaft
Technische Universität München - Professur für Green Technologies in Landscape Architecture (Projektkoordinator)
Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung
Helix Pflanzen GmbH
Stadt Frankfurt am Main - Grünflächenamt
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart - Amt für Umweltschutz - Abt. Stadtklimatologie, Garten- Friedhofs- und Forstamt
Project description:
Strengthening urban blue-green infrastructure is a prerequisite for mitigating climate change-associated effects, e.g. heavy precipitation events, flooding and drought, and could considerably contribute to regulating urban microclimate, especially in densely populated urban areas, mainly through cooling by evapotranspiration and shading. Invariably, however, it implies increased water demand for irrigation, which is further aggravated by rising water scarcity worldwide, wherefore alternative urban water resources, e.g. domestic greywater, uncontained groundwater outlets, outlets from drinking fountains, untapped springs, stormwater etc., must be made available and treated, if applicable, to produce irrigation water for urban greens.
The project INTERESS-I »Integrated strategies for strengthening urban blue-green infrastructures«, funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), puts these challenges to the fore, investigates on-demand treatment technologies and storage methods for alternative urban water resources, develops new forms of public greens and analyzes favorable boundary conditions and drawbacks for the implementation of climate-effective blue-green infrastructures in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Based on water availability and quality, varying urban climatic conditions and open space supply requirements, INTERESS-I develops strategies to enhance blue-green infrastructures in definite urban subspaces of both cities. In addition, the “Impulse project Stuttgart”, sited in the container city within the Wagenhallen areal in Stuttgart, demonstrates a compact urban prototypical implementation of climate-effective infrastructures, while serving as a living lab and showing the key principles of an integrated approach. Whereas greywater is collected from "Stuttgart 21" construction site containers and subsequently treated in flexible constructed wetlands, stormwater is drawn from adjacent roof areas. Both water resourcen are then used to produce irrigation water for new types of greeneries and vertical greens. The Frankfurt Impulse Project focuses on existing greywater treatment facilities in administrative buildings to produce irrigation water for mobile green rooms in public urban spaces and aims to sensitize people about the common use of water resources. The Impulse Projects Frankfurt and Stuttgart demonstrate innovative and compact forms of urban blue-green infrastructures.
In INTERESS-I, the Department for Resource-Efficient Wastewater Technology is in charge of developing concepts and technologies for the on-demand treatment of urban water resources under consideration of resource efficiency and climate resilience. Special focus is laid on a modified constructed wetland to treat greywater, under consideration of specific urban boundary conditions (e.g. lack of space) as well as climate change-associated effects (heat waves, periods of drought etc.) and plant requirements (water and nutrient contents).