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.

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Low Impact Development practices (LID) as alternative measures of urban drainage can be used within the approach of resources recycling and co-management. This study evaluates the potential contribution of a bioretention system to flood control, non-potable water demands (NPD) and resources co-management. Bioretention setups were tested experimentally under variable conditions to identify operational key-factors to multiple purposes. Additionally, the efficiencies obtained for laboratory scale were extrapolated for household and watershed scale, quantifying the indicators of water demand reduction (WDR), energy demand reduction (EDR) and carbon emission reduction (CER) for hybrid systems with LID. The laboratory results indicated that the use of a bioretention with a submerged zone can improve the quality of the water recovered for reuse, while maintaining the efficiency of runoff retention and peak flow attenuation. Comparing the bioretention effluent quality with the Brazilian standards for stormwater reuse, the parameters color, turbidity, E. coli and metals were above the limits, indicating the necessity of a better treatment to solids particles and disinfection. Expanding the analysis to watershed scale, the bioretention helped to reduce NPD demands up to 45%, leading to a reduction in energy demand and carbon emission from the centralized water supply system.

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) as green infrastructures to urban drainage, has proven to be an effective mitigation strategy both in terms of quantity and quality of runoff. The Real-time Control (RTC) can complement to both flood mitigation and improvement of water quality through the control of the elements of the drainage and sewage system. This study assessed the improvement opportunities of three NBS related techniques commonly applied in urban drainage with different spatial scales were selected: green roof, bioretention and detention basin when applied with RTC and the remaining challenges to integrating both methods. Additionally, our investigations showed that the main difficulties reported involve the planning stage 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 at the NBS studies on urban drainage are very recent. There are several opportunities that can be explored to optimize the performance.