Sponge Campus Design by Incorporating Vertical Design and LID Facilities: A Case Study in Eastern China

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of sponge city infrastructure in China, the concept and construction of sponge campus have received wide attention. Implementation of a sponge campus incorporated with low impact development (LID) facilities could effectively reduce runoff and promote rainwater recycling in case of rainfall occurrence, provide resilience and improve stability against climate change for both system itself and adjacent regions. However, most of the studies on sponge campus in China are focused on the design and evaluation of college campuses, while little emphasis has been put on elementary and secondary schools where the requirement and characteristics of target users are totally different. In this paper, designing concepts regarding vertical design and application of LID for sponge campus for elementary and secondary schools were given based on engineering practice. Then a typical secondary school campus in Kunshan, China was taken as an example, and simulation was conducted on recurrence period of 1 year and 20 years using stormwater management model (SWMM). The results showed that, under the rainfall intensity with a recurrence period of 1 year and 20 years, the peak flow was reduced 46.8% and 59.0%, respectively, while the total inflow was reduced 25.4% and 33.9%, respectively. Under recurrence period of 1 year, this vertically-designed campus with LID facilities provided 15.13% water storage capacity for the neighboring plot with only 9.16% of the plot area. This new way of vertical design coupled with LID facilities can help to create a much more ecological, safe and beautiful school campus.