Urban Water and Flood Risk Management: the Blue-Green Advantage - A China-UK-US Knowledge Exchange and Collaborative Opportunities Event

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This workshop follows on from the highly successful collaboration between UK and US academics supported by the award of a Clean Water for All grant to the EPSRC Research Consortium on 'Delivering and Evaluating Multiple Flood-risk Benefits in Blue-Green Cities'. The event is hosted by the University of Nottingham and brings together scientists, engineers and planners from the City of Ningbo with leading academics from the UK, China and USA. The aim is to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience on the advantages of using integrated drainage systems, best practices and green infrastructure to provide sustainable urban water, flood risk and environmental management. The City of Ningbo is using new approaches to creating an ideal urban environment through, for example, creating a 3.3 km urban eco-corridor (http://www.asla.org/2013awards/253.html). The US team recently completed a comparative study of water and environmental governance in Portland Oregon and Vancouver, Washington (http://www.fsl.orst.edu/eco-p/ultra/), while the UK team represent the research consortium currently evaluating the multiple benefits of Blue-Green Cities (http://www.bluegreencities.ac.uk/bluegreencities/index.aspx).A Blue-Green City aims to recreate a naturally-oriented water cycle while contributing to the amenity of the city by bringing water management and green infrastructure together. This is achieved by combining and protecting the hydrological and ecological values of the urban landscape while providing resilient and adaptive measures to deal with flood events. The innovative Blue-Green approach to water management in the city aims to satisfy the demands of urban drainage and planning via coherent and integrated strategies, and places value on the connection and interaction between blue and green assets. During the Ningbo Workshop, the Chinese, British and American teams will exchange specialist technical knowledge and share ideas on urban hydrology, hydraulics, geomorphology, ecology, forestry and community perceptions to establish and evaluate the benefits using green infrastructure in conjunction with conventional piped drainage. However, Visionary Leadership and Community Engagement in Blue-Green Design are vital, and these will be central themes throughout the Event.