Let it rain: Wrocław floodway extension landscape adaptation strategy

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Date
2020
Authors
Suter, Jessica
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Abstract
Extreme weather events resulting in floods are the leading cause of physical and economic damage in Poland. The SAP 2020 (Polish National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change) indicates that floods are a regular occurrence in the country, causing damage to all sectors of Poland’s economy, but chiefly to infrastructure located in floodplains (Ministry of the Environment Republic of Poland, 2013). Though flooding is not an exclusively recent phenomenon in the country, greater frequency and intensity of precipitation, largely attributed to climate change, has made increasingly evident the inability of the nation’s urban infrastructure to handle the stresses of droughts and floods (Tokarczyk-Dorociak, K., 2017, p.173). The city of Wrocław, situated in the Odra Valley where the Odra River and four of its tributary rivers meet, has experienced frequent flooding throughout history. The study of the Odra Catchment Basin upstream of the city affords a greater understanding of the Silesian Lowland region with regard to factors contributing to flooding events, including the influence of underlying geology, regional climate, and the built environment. It is important to recognize that flooding in the city of Wrocław is not typically caused by high amounts of local rain. Rather, high precipitation levels upstream in the Upper Catchment Basin drain into and ultimately accumulate in the Odra River. This consideration demonstrates the importance of understanding the influence of regional geological and human forces on the local waterbody. The result of the study is a design proposal reviving the abandoned Osobowice Irrigation Fields Site within the city of Wrocław for the purposes of stormwater management. It is proposed that the re-purposing of the site may be considered an extension of the Wrocław Floodway Trail, regarded as a marker of the city’s historical relationship with the Odra River. The project seeks to demonstrate how the landscape architect may recognize the natural and technical forces acting upon a waterbody, and work with the intersection of these forces to facilitate the adaptation of a site to climate change through the implementation of the strategies developed in this practicum.
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Landscape architecture, Phytoremediation, Flooding, Climate change, Adaptation, Poland, Wrocław, Ecological Infrastructure, Abandoned Infrastructure, Stormwater Management
Citation
Harvard