NbS Guidance Documents and Resources

If you want to find out more about the implementation of Nature-based Solutions, check out our guidance documents and resources below.

Implementation of Urban Nature-based Solutions Guidance Document for Planners, Developers and Developer Agents

Local Authority Waters ProgrammeThe catalytic impact of COVID-19 has fundamentally reordered our lives. The mainstreaming of working from home, has had a profound impact on how and where we choose to spend our time. We now better understand and appreciate the benefits of wellbeing and personal health provided by living in Compact Neighbourhoods.

Compact Neighbourhoods consist of clustering amenities, services and facilities in close proximity to where we live, greatly increasing the likelihood of walking, cycling, or using public transport to make these shorter journeys. This shift in urban design reduces the need for vehicle space, enabling vibrant, accessible, and social streetscapes. These new infrastructure designs and the reallocation of space offer the opportunity to meaningfully incorporate Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) into our  neighbourhoods, working in harmony with the natural environment.

These changes require adapting training, supply chains, and narratives around benefits, balancing new and existing risks. Embracing SuDS and NbS fosters health, resilience, and biodiversity, helping reverse climate impacts. This guidance provides practical steps, reimagining approved projects with NbS to inspire sustainable transformation.

This guidance sets the policy scene in outline, with an overview of the advantages. It then goes on to demonstrate the process of converting current planning approved schemes into Nature-based Solution versions, accepting the general layouts and designs of each.

This guidance aims to inspire and demystify, it is intended as a companion piece to the plethora of policies that already exist, one that tells the story step by step with projects and schemes that are familiar, applying the Nature-based Solutions lens and laying down the straightforward interventions that positively shifts the dial towards healthier and more sustainable choices.

Nature-based Solutions to the Management of Rainwater and Surface Water Runoff in Urban Areas

Water Sensitive Urban Design Best Practice Interim Guidance Document

The new best practice interim guidance document is now published and available for download. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (DHLGH), supported by LAWPRO, Dublin City Council and the County and City Managers Association engaged in an extensive round of consultations across the public sector including Local Authorities, Government Departments and Agencies together with private sector professional bodies and other stakeholders in 2021.

This followed the Urban Planning and Nature-based Surface Water Management webinar in November 2020 (which was attended by circa 500 people), and the Significant Water Management Issues Report produced in advance of the draft River Basin Management Plan 2022-2027. The document was launched by Minister Malcolm Noonan at a second webinar held on 30th November 2021, and was attended by over 530 participants.

The document aims to assist all of those involved in activities relevant to the management of rainwater and surface water runoff in urban areas.

This includes (not exclusively)

  •  Planning
  • Transport
  • Housing
  • Flood risk management
  • Environment and biodiversity
  • Climate
  • Urban regeneration
  • Blue way and Greenways and outdoor recreation
  • Parks

For local authorities this will require a multidisciplinary approach and includes the involvement of the following where appropriate

  • Planners (forward planning, development planning, compliance checking etc.)
  • Engineers (including roads and housing)
  • Architects including landscape architects
  • Environment sections
  • Parks sections
  • Community and enterprise (e.g., if planning projects such as Public Realm etc.)
  • Professionals within local authorities and anyone involved in the planning or design of developments or the general area of surface water management.

In reality successful implementation of Nature-based Solutions to surface water management (incl. Green and Blue Infrastructure implementation) requires a multidisciplinary approach to create a better environment for all.

Urban Planning and Nature Based Surface Water Management Implementation Strategy Scoping Project

Filter strip on N24 provides not only extra surface run off soakage but also biodiversity and amenity benefits.

Water sensitive urban design (WSUD): The newly emerging international approach of water sensitive urban design (WSUD) has been identified as a more integrated approach placing the management of surface water at the centre of urban planning and design. It effectively captures Nature based Surface Water Management (SuDS/Sustainable urban Drainage Systems) in a holistic approach to urban planning and design, putting water concerns front and centre of planning, and looking at the benefits that water provides in addition to planning resilience etc.

Filter strip on N24 provides not only extra surface run off soakage but also biodiversity and amenity benefits.

Nature Based Surface Water Management: Nature Based SuDS work with nature (rather than trying to control it) and are now being mainstreamed across the globe. The benefits of taking a nature-based approach includes not just flood risk management benefits, but also improved water quality (e.g. can filter out >80% heavy metal pollutants), biodiversity (e.g., provide habitat for range of species) and Climate adaptation and mitigation (resilience, micro-climate cooling, carbon sequestration etc.).

The issue of climate change and the resultant need to adapt our cities and towns to be more resilient to increasingly frequent and intensive rainfall events have also brought sustainable water management in the urban context to the fore.

Therefore, the DHLGH, LAWPRO and the CCMA have established a project to actively promote the implementation of nature-based surface water management solutions to our cities and towns through new developments (greenfield and brownfield), as well as urban regeneration and, indeed, all projects that intervene in the urban fabric, using an urban design and plan led approach.

The project will develop an implementation strategy for the development of Water Sensitive Urban Design for the Irish context, which includes Nature Based SuDS. The project is currently engaging with all Local Authorities, state agencies including EPA, IFI, NPWS and OPW, Government Departments, TII and DMURS and the private sector to better understand how Water Sensitive Urban Design can be implemented more coherently in Ireland. The project will run for 6 months and report on its findings in time for the 3rd WFD Cycle. More information on the background leading up to the project is provided below including presentations given at the November 9th 2020 Webinar on Urban Planning and Nature Based Surface Water Management: From Theory to Practice organised in partnership with the Irish Planning Institute and Engineers Ireland.

For more information contact naturebasedsuds@lawaters.ie