My first article was recently published in the journal Water. I wrote this article together with 12 co-authors in our research project Sustainable Urban Flood Management (SUrF) and it gave me new insights in our different fields of research. We represent nine different affiliations and my job was to coordinate the writing process and of course to write my own parts. It is wonderful to work with this group of researchers. Thanks to all of you for your contributions!

Article: Sörensen, Johanna, et al. “Re-Thinking Urban Flood Management—Time for a Regime Shift.” Water 8.8 (2016): 332.

The article can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/w8080332. The article is freely available online.

Abstract

Urban flooding is of growing concern due to increasing densification of urban areas, changes in land use, and climate change. The traditional engineering approach to flooding is designing single-purpose drainage systems, dams, and levees. These methods, however, are known to increase the long-term flood risk and harm the riverine ecosystems in urban as well as rural areas. In the present paper, we depart from resilience theory and suggest a concept to improve urban flood resilience. We identify areas where contemporary challenges call for improved collaborative urban flood management. The concept emphasizes resiliency and achieved synergy between increased capacity to handle stormwater runoff and improved experiential and functional quality of the urban environments. We identify research needs as well as experiments for improved sustainable and resilient stormwater management namely, flexibility of stormwater systems, energy use reduction, efficient land use, priority of transport and socioeconomic nexus, climate change impact, securing critical infrastructure, and resolving questions regarding responsibilities.