NATURE BASED SOLUTIONS (NBS) FOR BRAZILIAN URBAN DRAINAGE: CASE STUDY OF THE APPLICABILITY OF NBS DEVICES IN THE INTEGRATED RESPONSE TO EXTREME WATER EVENTS
Keywords:
stormwater management, floods, flash floods, urban resilience, mapping, sustainabilityAbstract
Extreme hydrological events pose major challenges for urban management. The municipality of Estrela/RS (Brazil) experiences recurring episodes due to heavy rainfall and its proximity to the Taquari River. In this context, Nature-based Solutions (NbS) emerge as complementary alternatives to gray stormwater drainage infrastructure. This study evaluated the applicability of NbS in the urban area of Estrela, considering compliance with technical requirements for implementation. The method applied adopted the delimitation of the Taquari River floodplain with a 25-year return period, using the HAND model, associated with topographic, pedological, and hydrological criteria. Geoprocessing analysis identified areas suitable for implementing different types of NbS. The results indicate that about 30% of the municipality's urban area is susceptible to flooding. In contrast, 15% of the territory, outside the floodplain, proved suitable for implementing the devices. The NbS revealed potential for integration with traditional infrastructure. The mapping developed is a replicable tool. It is concluded that the incorporation of NbS into the urban planning of Estrela contributes to reducing vulnerabilities with sustainable practices in the face of extreme hydrological events.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Revista de Gestão de Água da América Latina (Water Management Journal in Latin America)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
When sending the manuscript, notice that:
To be responsible for the other authors, when applicable, as co-responsible for the technical and scientific content of the article according to Article 5 of Brazilian Law N. 9610, regarding Copyright.
All statements published in the manuscript are the sole responsibility of the authors. However, all published material becomes the property of REGA, which reserves the copyright. Therefore, no material published in REGA may be reproduced without the written permission of REGA. All authors of articles submitted to REGA must sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement, which will take effect from the date of acceptance of the article. This term will be requested by REGA prior to the publication of the article. The author responsible for the article will receive, free of charge, the electronic record of the publication (in PDF format).
All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of one of the following user licenses:
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts, and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text or data mine the article, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, and do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author’s honor or reputation.
Author Rights
For open access publishing this journal uses an exclusive licensing agreement. Authors will retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights and REGA will be granted publishing and distribution rights.
Author Self-Archiving Policy
This journal permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites and institutional or funder repositories after publication. The final published PDF version should be used and bibliographic details that credit the publication in this journal should be included.
