Creating Resilient Cities by exploring how supply, cooling, and drainage functions perform and interact in the urban water cycle

Climatic events, such as droughts, heatwaves, and floods, are becoming more frequent and more severe due to climate change. These events cause the three biggest threats to liveability in urban areas: water scarcity, heat stress, and flooding. Therefore, designing cities to be more climate resilient is important to protect current and future populations. A well-functioning urban water system can mitigate these threats through the storage and supply of water, water-related cooling, and effective absorption and drainage of rainfall.

This PhD investigates how supply, cooling, and drainage interact with each other and the urban system, including co-benefits or trade-offs between functions and scales.  Understanding these interactions helps to build a more holistic view of the urban water cycle to inform design and mitigate the effects of climate change. The project will characterise supply, cooling, and drainage functions and their interactions in an urban precinct and investigate how infrastructure design affects the ability of the urban water cycle to deliver supply, cooling, and drainage.