Rethinking Infrastructure Design for Multi-Use Water Services

The objectives of this book is to present Blue Green Solutions which are to achieve optimised solutions for urban developments and retrofitting primarily by optimising performance of ecosystems affected by water and greenery interactions. In the case of water they are based on the concept of 3Rs reduce, reuse and recycle. While `reduce` is bounded to behavior change of users and cannot be integrated within a water management system, reuse and recycle are most certainly topic. The opportunities for improving this urban unbalance lie among others at the neighborhood level. Applying a more natural approach to water management, for instance with through use of natural outflows or buffering, more use of onsite infiltration into the soil, better utilisation of rainwater reuse of wastewater in due time, and improved urban planning which incorporates local characteristics into the management plan will be more cost effective and efficient in comparison to centralised water management. Since the centralised systems are based on artificial balance of urban water they are becoming increasingly unbalanced and vulnerable increasing urbanisation and climate change.§