Building with Nature present at EGU2018 in Vienna
A special session on “Nature based solutions for hydrological extremes and water resource management” showed that Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are a good alternative for ‘grey’ engineering options. Nature Based Solutions is a more common name for Building with Nature. Mark Wilkinson from the Hutton Institute (Scotland) gathered several people to give presentations on this topic during this session. In the corresponding poster session, Ralph Schielen, Rijkswaterstaat (The Netherlands) elaborated on NBS.
Assess Nature Based Solutions
Ralph showed that there are several frameworks in the literature that can be used to assess NBS, taking into account subjects such as governance, monitoring, and stakeholder involvement. To see whether this approach works, the assessment will be carried out on the pilots within the Building with Nature project in Scotland, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands. The goal is also to learn from each other and to see whether the challenges we encounter are general or country-specific. The result can be used to show national and regional authorities that it is worth looking at natural solutions to reduce flood risks. These solutions have a lot of added value as an engineering solution.