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Stormwater and Flood Risk Management

WSP’s flood protection consultants help clients respond to stormwater threats and develop watershed management practices that address water quality issues.

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Effective stormwater and flood risk management reduces and mitigates the adverse impacts of population growth and urban development, which increase the amount of stormwater runoff and the level of pollutants and creates imbalance in watershed hydrology and ecosystems.

With a full understanding of stormwater and flood risk management, pollution control regulations and industry standards, WSP delivers stormwater control facility planning, analysis and design, watershed management and planning, green infrastructure and ecosystem assessment and restoration. Our flood protection consultants help clients define and respond to stormwater threats and develop management practices that address water quality issues. Our sustainable and environment-positive solutions manage and protect surface water resources for the long term.

Watershed management

The health and function of our watersheds can be compromised by localized problem areas or by widespread impairments across communities. The WSP team excels at working with communities to understand the complexities and concerns unique to each area, performing investigations to identify the issues that strain our water resources, and developing holistic management plans to uplift the health of our surface water and our communities.

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Cloudburst management

As rain volumes increases and cities are getting denser, it becomes more essential to actively include room for surface water runoff in our residential areas. We combine our knowledge in flood risk management, hydraulics, landscaping and urban planning. Our services include a plan for how, when and where to prepare for flooding from a watershed point of view and who is responsible for the measurements. It is called a Structure Plan for Cloudburst, a strategy implemented across all parts of the municipality’s organizations.

Stormwater runoff management

Urbanization of our watersheds and the disruption of the water cycle by buildings, pavement and drainage system piping harms the quality and behavior of surface water. These disruptions change natural hydrologic patterns, accelerate natural stream flows, stop infiltration and groundwater interchange, and introduce urban pollutants to runoff. WSP plans, designs and constructs the full range of drainage and runoff management solutions needed to support our communities and infrastructure, and to protect the environment from our collective footprint.

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Delta Flood Protection

High-water protection is essential for densely populated deltas. Due to climate change, river discharges can vary more, while sea levels will rise more rapidly. In 2017, 339 million people lived in river deltas of which 89% lived in areas that are prone to flooding. WSP plays a significant role in delta flood protection by designing and assessing dikes and water barriers. We are active in various phases of current high-water protection programs, including designing and performing calculations for dike reinforcements, from the exploratory phase to delivery. Our services also include permitting, environmental management and construction supervision.

Green infrastructure and low-impact development

WSP specializes in green infrastructure best practices, such as green streets, complete tree canopies and natural stormwater infiltration. By implementing low-impact development principles and practices, disruptions to the water cycle are managed in a way that reduces the impact of built areas and promotes natural movement within an ecosystem or watershed. Applied on a broad scale, low-impact development techniques can maintain or restore a watershed’s hydrologic and ecological functions.

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Stream and wetland ecosystem restoration

Healthy ecosystems play a vital role in the management and resiliency of our streams, rivers, bayous and coastlines. Thriving riverine and wetland ecosystems drive habitat for fish and wildlife, feed the drinking water sources for millions of people, provide sustainable flood protection, provide natural water quality treatment and support local economies. At WSP, we employ global expertise in stream restoration, tidal and non-tidal wetland creation, hydraulic engineering and river mechanics, riverine ecology, wetland and freshwater ecology and botany, biology, invasive species management, freshwater and marine sciences engineering, and geomorphology.

Nature-based solutions

Nature-based solutions (NbS) leverage natural processes to provide environmental, social, and economic benefits – such as protecting coastlines while enhancing biodiversity. When we work to protect communities from flooding, there is an opportunity to look at it through a broader lens of how we can work with nature. We can adapt and modify traditional solutions by replacing hard infrastructure with green infrastructure that offers ecological and societal co-benefits and helps combat flooding, erosion, extreme temperatures, and restores biodiversity.

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Hydraulic structures and flood protection

With increasing uncertainties and changing climates, flood protection through carefully planned, designed and operated hydraulic structures play a critical role in saving lives and protecting properties and communities. WSP provides design, inspection and maintenance of new and upgraded facilities such as dams, levees, reservoirs and pumping stations. We bring flood experts across the wide range of technical specialties required for these projects, including structural, geotechnical, electrical, mechanical and tunneling.

Hydrologic and hydraulic modeling

Perceiving the relationships between our watersheds, rainfall and the resultant runoff is a key step in understanding flood risks and performance along our waterways. Beyond simply tabulating flood flow rates, it is even more important that we understand the magnitude of uncertainty associated with our estimates. Using advanced hydrologic and hydraulic modeling, WSP is pioneering approaches to considering the interactions between rainfall and runoff and integrating uncertainty into our analysis and decision-making processes, offering industry leading capabilities including rigorous computation fluid dynamics studies of three-dimensional flow fields.

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Featured solutions

LandiQ

Sreamlining the planning system for Government agencies and enabling better informed and more consistent evidence-based decision making.
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FloodVue

Bringing Flood Risk to Life Through Augmented Reality: WSP's FloodVue™ digital tool
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Floodly

Machine-learning flood prediction tool
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Smart Drains

Exploiting the latest sensor-based technology to build resilience to the effects of climate change, including mitigating flood risk with future-ready drains.

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Webinars

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