The potential of green infrastructure application in urban runoff control for land use planning: A preliminary evaluation from a southern Italy case study

Among the approaches for run-off regulation, green infrastructure is identified as non-traditional measure to compensate the effects of soil sealing generated from urban development. It is recognized as a way to increase the provision of urban ecosystem services and is increasingly being used in research and practice on storm-water management through Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS). The adoption of SUDS in urban planning might protect hydrological and ecological dimensions of landscapes while providing resilient options to face flood risk management.This paper shows the assessment of SUDS potential to increase the regulating service capacity in a dense urban catchment in southern Italy. A comparison between scenarios of pre-implementation and post-implementation of SUDS is performed through catchment simulations with a hydraulic model. Results showed different effectiveness of SUDS options, in terms of variations of the indicator chosen as proxy of the regulating service capacity. Results showed a better performance obtained by green roofs than permeable pavements, highlighting a limited capacity of run-off regulation achieved with SUDS deployment in public areas only. This suggests that innovative policies to encourage private land owners to adopt measures of SUDS could be fundamental for the retrofitting of urban settlements.