Management policies for surface runoff with urban sustainability objectives

Water is used across all sectors to advance development, including energy generation, agricultural, industrial, recreational and domestic use. In urban areas, land-use changes may cause poor infiltration in soils, and when rainwater falls, some of the water is absorbed into the ground, and the rest flows along the surface as runoff (stormwater). The stormwater produces substantial damage to the urban network, growth accidents, and an origin of pollution. These problems are expected to be further intensified due to changing rainfall patterns related to climate change, aging infrastructures and the continuous densification of cities, where impervious surfaces are increasingly replacing permeable surfaces and natural drainage.This study presents a review on already published papers on runoff management. In this regard, this paper is assorted due to different methods to collect the runoff water. However, these methods depend on several important aspects, such as groundwater level, the weather conditions of cities, water pollutions, infiltration rate, vegetated urban soil types and soil characteristic. These aspects have a critical impact on finding the suitable place and methods that can be applied in cities making urban areas more sustainable during severe rainfall or snow melting.Based on results, several methods can make cities more sustainable. However, the intensity of rain falls and hydrology aspect of the city is important to consider for applying low Impact Development (LID) systems. It can be concluded that green infrastructures are more suitable for low precipitation while the integration of gray infrastructures with green infrastructures would help the runoff water derange out of the cities or downstream of the river in heavy rainfall and floods.