Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing Sponge City Strategies for Urban Stormwater Management in New Zealand

Umar Farooq¹, Mohamed Elkharboutly¹, Wajiha Shahzad¹

1. Massey University

Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 328 to 337. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_32.

Abstract

In New Zealand, the intensification of urbanisation burdens the existing stormwater management system. The country’s stormwater management system cannot cope with the increasing burden caused by climate change, which leads to an increase in the precipitation volume and causes flooding. Recent flooding resulting from torrential rains and cyclones has raised serious concerns about the country’s effective management and resilience of stormwater systems. In this context, sponge cities have emerged as an innovative solution that relies on natural processes to absorb, store, and manage stormwater effectively. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis to provide a foundation for understanding the feasibility of sponge city adoption in New Zealand and learnings from global implementations. A total of 888 articles were selected out of 1259 for the bibliometric analysis obtained from the Scopus database with the keyword fields designed by the authors. Rstudio and bibliometrix packages were used for the analysis. Sponge City was found to be the trending topic for stormwater management-related issues that cause flooding. Besides that, it was also highlighted that rebuilding the entire water infrastructure in traditional ways will cost around $120-$185 billion over the 30-year period, lacking the potential to tackle the extreme future events due to urbanisation that led to disasters. In contrast, China’s initial investment of NZD20 billion for 16 pilot Sponge City projects saved USD600 million in Wuhan only by favouring Sponge City features over traditional grey infrastructure. The paper aims to promote adopting innovative and sustainable solutions to address urban water challenges in New Zealand and beyond.

Keywords

Session

Presented in Track L, Saturday 9 November 2024, 11:00 to 13:00, room WG 1020, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Assoc. Prof. Timothy Adekunle.

How to Cite

Farooq, U., Elkharboutly, M., & Shahzad, W. (2025). Assessing the Feasibility of Implementing Sponge City Strategies for Urban Stormwater Management in New Zealand. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 328–337). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_32

About the Conference

Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.