Water Treatment in Urban Environments: A Guide for the Implementation and Scaling of Nature-based Solutions

The value of implementing nature-based solutions (NbS) for water treatment in urban environments is increasingly recognized due to the multiple ecosystem services and societal benefits they provide. The successful implementation of NbS for urban water treatment, however, depends on a range of diverse technical and societal factors that need to be taken into account. Those vary by the type of NbS implemented, the societal challenges the NbS are designed to address and the local ecological, socio-economic and political context, in which the solutions are implemented.  

This book provides a collection of guidelines for the implementation of three types of NbS for water treatment in urban environments across cities in South/Southeast Asia, namely constructed wetlands, green roofs and floating treatment wetlands. The guides were developed based on existing experiences with the establishment, operation, and maintenance of those three types of NbS in three different countriesin South/Southeast Asia and the lessons learnt from their implementation. They provide detailed outlines of suggested steps for ensuring successful implementation in the respective local contexts. Those include overall planning schemes, surveys for socio-economic evaluations, suggested methods for construction and associated costs, required maintenance as well as a range of operational monitoring parameters. It also includes examples of approaches for the scaling of the three types of NbS discussed in the book in their respective local contexts.

This book is expected to benefit local government units and contractors, and other stakeholders involved in NbS implementation and up-scaling, as well as researchers and postgraduate students who plan to conduct pilot-scale studies on NbS.

Veeriah Jegatheesan (Jega) is a Professor of Environmental Engineering and former Director of Water: Effective Technologies and Tools (WETT) Research Centre at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Jega is the founder and Chairman of the international conference series on Challenges in Environmental Science & Engineering (CESE) held annually since 2008. Jega has conducted extensive research on the application of membrane bioreactors, sugar cane juice clarification, seawater desalination and the treatment of mine tailing ponds. He has over 500 publications including 195 peer-reviewed journal articles and five edited books. Jega is also the managing guest editor of 40 special issues in peer-reviewed journals. In 2019, Stormwater Industry Association (Australia) has appointed him as one of the Governance Panel members for the Australian Stormwater Quality Improvement Device Evaluation Protocol (SQIDEP). Jega is the Editor-in-Chief of a book series entitled Applied Environmental Science a5nd Engineering (AESE) for a Sustainable Future published by Springer and has been instrumental in publishing 14 books since 2015. Jega has been appointed as the Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Quality Management Journal (Wiley Publisher) from January 2020.

Perlie Velasco is an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of the Philippines – Los Baños (DCE, UPLB). She is the lead faculty in Environmental Engineering at the department with research projects in constructed wetlands and integrated solid waste management. She got her undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at UPLB (2005), Master’s degree in Water Resources Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2010), and PhD Degree in Environmental Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia (2022). Her research works focus on membrane-based recovery of dissolved methane from wastewater effluentand constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment.

Nevelina Pachova is a Research Fellow and Research & Innovation Advisor at RMIT Europe, the European hub of Australian University RMIT, where she conducts research and supports the development and implementation of research and innovation projects in the field of urban development and sustainability transitions with a focus on the integration of nature-based solutions in urban development and planning, network governance and social inclusion. Prior to joining RMIT, Nevelina worked in the field of natural resources management and poverty reduction at the different agencies of the United Nations University in Tokyo and Bonn.