Tackling Urban Stormwater Challenges: The MULTISOURCE Planning Platform

As European cities continue to expand and extreme weather events become more frequent, urban stormwater management is increasingly under pressure. Traditional sewer systems, often outdated and overwhelmed, are struggling to keep pace with the intensifying demands. Upgrading these infrastructures is complex and costly. As a result, innovative, adaptable, and cost-effective approaches to stormwater management are more critical than ever.

The MULTISOURCE Planning Platform has emerged as a powerful tool to support urban planners and municipalities in addressing these challenges. By leveraging open data and Python-based tools, the platform offers an advanced framework to develop sustainable stormwater management strategies.

What sets this platform apart is its modular design, allowing for flexibility and easy integration across different European cities. Urban planners can use these tools to meet site-specific stormwater objectives while navigating local constraints such as space availability, economic considerations, and existing infrastructure.

Tools Driving Innovation

Several key tools are embedded within the MULTISOURCE Planning Platform, each offering unique capabilities:

• Spatial-economic stormwater scenarios
  It provides decision-makers with spatial constraints and economic insights to select the best strategy for their urban environment. The decentralisation potential for Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) indicates where NBS should be located to have a greater effect on the urban catchment.
• Pysewer
  It automatically generates cost-efficient sewer network layouts connecting all buildings to a waste water treatment plant.
• OCTOPUS
  It reduces wastewater management costs by merging water treatment systems of individual settlements into larger networks. Regional treatment plant clusters are identified by optimising settlement networks.

A portion of these tools is already available as open-source software on platforms such as GitHub and GitLab, enabling broader accessibility and fostering innovation within the urban water management community.

Cities interested in enhancing their stormwater management capabilities or conducting pre-feasibility studies for decentralised solutions are encouraged to reach out for guidance and collaboration: Jan Friesen – jan.friesen@ufz.de, and Maria Chiara Lippera – maria-chiara.lippera@ufz.de