Low impact development and green infrastructure

Abstract

Water is the main source of life for all living creatures and water resources should be protected from draining away. There are two main sources of water that is used for water supply such as ground water and surface water. Both of them are fed by precipitation water in order to stay stable for providing consumption requirements. Thus, only one drop of precipitation water should not be wasted so storm water management practices come to light. Two of the mostly known storm water management practices are low impact development (LID) which works with nature to manage stormwater at place closer to its source and green infrastructure which uses natural processes to provide infiltration and evapotranspiration or reuses runoff on the generation area. There are many LID practices that have been used to adhere to these principles such as bio retention facilities, rain gardens, vegetated rooftops, rain barrels and permeable pavements. Green infrastructure can be used in wide range of landscapes in addition to more traditional stormwater control systems to support the principles of LID. In this research, definition and main features of LID and green infrastructure was investigated, main practices used for implementation of these methods were reviewed and two methods were compared according to their benefits.