Chapter 8: Managing surface water using natural systems

The growth in the use of more natural systems for drainage management is outlined and how this has developed over the past half a century; slowly at first, but gaining momentum as the potential value of ecosystem services to humanity became clear by way of benchmarking at the start of this millennium. Taking sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) as a focus, the rationale, design, value and outlook for using nature-based systems are described and shown to be able to help offset climate change impacts, simultaneously providing better and more healthy urban environments and effectively managing surface water flooding and pollution.