Carlos Salinas Rodríguez

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Literature on water management in urban context provides different approaches to deal with either abundance or scarcity of water. Water sensitive urban design constitutes an approach aiming to deal with the water cycle as whole. Some experiences are reported in the evolution of cities towards the water sensitive state; however, there is no single city that can claim to be at that latest state.

When referring to water management, it is needed to plan different possible outcomes taking into account the uncertainties present in the system but also the uncertainties inferred by external factors. Several techniques for planning under uncertainties have been developed and provide a good opportunity to integrate the previously mentioned approaches.

Flood and drought resilience comprises the evolution of the theoretical concepts from different branches of sciences such as ecology and natural sciences for latter adaptation to socio-economic and engineering systems. Resilience has been addressed in the Netherlands by several researchers and some of the national standards for management of flooding and protection rely upon the concept of resilience.

A major task for researchers and practitioners is to develop a common over-arching framework that works for different conditions and that makes possible the comparison between different situations. The objective of this research, therefore, is to understand water sensitivity and flood and drought resilience in an integrated way for their management over the long term using adaptation pathways for urban water management. 

This research falls under the Project 4.2 "Socio-Technical Flood Resilience in Water Sensitive Cities − Adaptation across spatial and temporal scales" of the CRC-WSC program.