Measuring the environmental benefits and social impact of large scale Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS)

Urban drainage engineers increasingly understand that using Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) to manage water close to where it falls offers a wide range of benefits to the environment and society, including increasing biodiversity and boosting wellbeing.

The Water Industry has used a range of methodologies and measures to demonstrate these wider benefits. However, these approaches fall short of providing a comprehensive understanding of the environmental and social impacts of SuDS interventions, thereby limiting their effectiveness in evidence-based policy making. A robust wider benefits assessment toolkit of cost-effective measurement techniques will bring greater certainty to the cost benefit assessment and funding models for SuDS.

Severn Trent Water's ambitious programme for town-scale SuDS retrofitting in Mansfield provides a unique - and timely - opportunity to collect key evidence on how SuDS deliver wider environmental and social benefits in practice. The successful candidate will work closely with the water industry as it develops its AMP8 SuDS programmes and have the opportunity to develop an influential network of leading practitioners across the sector.

The student will identify, develop and test a range of physical, data engineering and social science assessment techniques to establish changes in the natural capital and social impact of an area secured through the delivery of a town-scale SuDS programme. The lessons learned will be transferable to all UK water utilities, as the need to identify cost-effective, sustainable and resilient alternatives to conventional urban drainage infrastructure is universal.