Projects

The Urban Green Design and Modelling of Sustainable Drainage Systems (Urban Green DaMS)  was a collaborative research project between the University of Sheffield and Newcastle University, led by Prof. Virginia Stovin and Prof. Richard Dawson respectively. The project ran from 2019 through to 2022.

Urban Green DaMS set out to address a set of critical research questions relating to the design and modelling of bioretention cells for alleviating urban flood risk.

As an alternative to building more/larger sewers, we are starting to implement SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems). SuDS is an overarching term for a 'toolbox' of techniques that aim to deal with the quantity of rainfall, but also to have a positive impact on water quality, amenity and biodiversity. Retrofitting SuDS into urban areas can help to improve stormwater management within our existing urban areas. Vegetated bioretention cells (often referred to as rain gardens) are one of the simplest, practical and most reproducible SuDS options. They can be fitted adjacent to urban streets, dealing directly with road runoff.

EUGINE is a collaborative Knowledge Exchange project between The University of Sheffield and Severn Trent Water, focusing on enabling delivery of state-of-the-art Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) for Mansfield, UK.

Severn Trent Water are investing £76 million in Mansfield on a range of nature-based solutions to protect communities from flooding.   

Working alongside Mansfield District Council and Nottinghamshire County Council, this is the largest project of its kind ever to be attempted in the country.    

When it’s complete, the scheme will be able to store over 58 million litres of surface water – that’s about 23 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In real terms this means reduced flood risk for 90,000 people and the creation of 390 jobs locally, too.   

The programme will the blueprint for how we manage flooding in the future across the UK. And at the same time, it makes Mansfield an even fresher, greener place to live for thier customers and communities.

Our research focuses on the stormwater management benefits of green roofs. Our overall research aim is to develop accurate and useful hydrological modelling tools to predict the runoff response from a green roof for any arbitrary rainfall time series.

For information about other green roof research activity within the University of Sheffield (including work on biodiversity, plant selection, artificial soils and acoustic performance), please visit the Green Roof Centre.

This EPSRC funded project, 'Residence Times in Vegetated Stormwater Ponds', focused on quantifying the latter. 

The project improved our understanding of how vegetation impacts water movement in ponds and how this can be modelled. This allows for better predictions of the ability of ponds to improve water quality. The work was a collaboration between the University of Sheffield and the University of Warwick.

As of 31 August 2016, this project was successfully completed. We thank our researchers, project partners, guest speakers, and everyone else who has participated. 

While dedicated funding is no longer available, we look forward to continuing to develop our knowledge of vegetation, mixing, CFD modelling, residence time distributions, and stormwater ponds with you in the future as we are able. 

Our primary activity is the Urban Green Infrastructure Symposium, a quasi-annual one-day showcase and networking event for ECRs who work on urban green infrastructure, primarily from across the University of Sheffield, but open to national and international attendees. We held our first UGI Symposium on 8th of December 2016, with subsequent events on the 11th of January 2018, the 7th of May 2019 and most recently the 30th Mayth 2022.

The symposium is a fantastic opportunity to present your research, share experiences, collaborate and network across departments and faculties.