Sustainable urban drainage systems for flood mitigation

Abstract

Urban flooding associated with heavy rainfall, impervious surfaces, and inadequate sewerage systems requires approaches that go beyond conventional drainage. This article therefore reviews the evidence on Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS) for flood mitigation. A qualitative and exploratory document review was conducted, with a reproducible search of academic databases and technical literature, screening and full-text reading, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and extraction into a matrix of variables of typology, context, and performance. The findings indicate that SuDS, as distributed infrastructure, incorporate storage and increase transit times, attenuating peak flows, reducing runoff volumes, and delaying the hydrological response; however, their performance is contingent on rainfall patterns, antecedent moisture, soil conductivity, water table, and operation. Consequently, the mitigation achieved is not a fixed property of the typology, but rather of the design-site coupling and verifiable maintenance, especially in the face of silting. It is proposed to implement hybrid portfolios and strengthen comparability with standardized metrics and multi-event monitoring.