The Projects

Waterloo Urban-Adapt – University of Waterloo

Our goal is to mitigate the impacts of flooding and intense rainfall events in Ontario communities, with a
specific focus on the City of Waterloo. The strategy addresses the issue from a systemic, sustainable
perspective and is expected to be easily adaptable to changes in climate, location, and policy.

The solution is in support of the Stormwater Credit program that is already in place in the City of
Waterloo, with some suggested changes and additional components. Waterloo Urban-Adapt is suggesting adjustments to the fee collection metric to better assess the amount of runoff each property is contributing to the municipal stormwater collection and storage infrastructure. The implementation of our designed homeowner’s guide is also suggested.

The purpose of the guide is to inform residents and businesses of their choices when it comes to dealing
with their own stormwater runoff and how they can take advantage of their local stormwater fee credit
program.

The guide will primarily be in the form of a smartphone application; however, it is planned to have the guide in multiple formats for accessibility. The guide will consist of two sections. The first section will provide the user with information on the basics of stormwater runoff and mitigation, as well as information on stormwater fees/credits. The second section will assist users, through a decision-making framework, with the implementation of stormwater mitigation strategies on their property so that they can both reduce their impact on the stormwater network and take advantage of the stormwater credit program.

Project MO3 – Durham College

Project MO3 “Moe” is a self powered, mobile, water filtration system. Utilizing the power of solar energy and combining it with the oxidation abilities of Ozone, project MO3 brings an innovation to the mobile water filtration community. Originally designed to mitigate flood waters into clean drinking water in the form of disaster relief. Project MO3 aims to reduce flood waters, support essential infrastructure, and provide clean drinking water to those in need after a disaster.

Project MO3 being a mobile water filtration unit, can be implemented in a wide variety of communities not only those suffering from disaster. The project aims to not only bring clean water to those in need, but also educate and empower them to facilitate bringing clean water to both themselves
and others in their community.

The Green Container – University of Toronto

With the rapidly changing climate, there is a need to incorporate resilience in cities by effective stormwater management. Our team intends to focus on retaining stormwater for utilization afterwards. Since we are working to create a solution for downtown Toronto, instead of changing the current infrastructure, our design will mitigate overflow and flooding through innovative and sustainable extensions to existing infrastructure, that can be scalable for both corporate gardens and private homes. This design can also be implemented for green traffic islands for roads and along the streets to ultimately create a city will small stormwater retention systems everywhere.

The Green Container is an adaptable, scalable container that will be placed along sidewalks and road medians in cities. As a dual concrete layer container, it stores water which is then either utilized by the plants, native to the location, within the container or released into the soil in a controlled manner in order to prevent oversaturation. It includes features such a fine mesh at the top and outlets at the bottom to control the inputs and outputs and overflow valves to prevent water overflow onto streets during intense weather storms. By diverting water from roads, existing sewage systems and the soil, the Green Container will mitigate the effects of mitigate the impacts of flooding and erosion and effectively utilize a valuable resource – water.

Rainology – University of Toronto

Our team Rainology, which consists of 4 second-year civil engineering students, is focusing on reducing the runoff volumes by using the concept of a sponge city. The concept of a sponge city allows a higher volume of water to be infiltrated into the ground or storage system to reduce the volume of stormwater runoff going into the sewage pipes. This can be achieved through the implementation of green space and permeable surfaces. As our team has focused on the City of Toronto we have considered the lack of green spaces for additional parks so we chose to optimize current green spaces to create an Elevated Park.

The Elevated Park consists of four main components: a green roof, wetlands, a retention pond, and an underground water storage system. The main elevated section of the park will have a green roof on top to allows precipitation to be continuously infiltrated as water is runs down the elevation. Excess water will enter the wetlands where natural filtration of the water will occur. From the wetlands, the filtered water will then enter a retention pond then to a storage system through the use of pumps where water can then be used to maintain the park during dry seasons.

Ultimately, this design is able to reduce the potential of flash floods occurring, and the contamination of discharged water entering our drinking source keeping the public safe. This design also encourages local communities to come together and enjoy the space that is designed to protect them.

Raindrops – University of Toronto

Our idea is to develop a system that encompasses different Low Impact Development strategies throughout Downtown Toronto. We aimed to decentralize stormwater management in the city by creating opportunities for natural water retention and infiltration in as much of the city areas as possible.

As part of the integrated solution, the implementation of green roofs and walls is considered for a public building of the City of Toronto. The next part of the integrated solution is the implementation of several bioretention boxes that supports traffic at various locations to reduce run-off. These are particularly used on main roads where traffic lanes cannot be compromised.

The first layer of the bioretention box will be a 1.5 inches highly porous pavement. It is made with recycled tyres, urethane and crushed stones and can support up to 3000 gallons/square-foot/hour of water. This layer can also purify the water infiltrated by reducing phosphates and nitrates.

The second layer consists of many sub-layers, which deals with fine particle filtration, denitrification, dephosphorization and heavy metal removal.

The last layer is used for effective retention. It is a combination of soil with recycled silica glass aggregate made from crushed glass bottles. Silica reacts with water generating a long chain reaction that allows soil particles to absorb water like a sponge. The final part of the integrated solution involves placing bio-soil boxes on the sidewalks along all other local and collector roads in the city to temporarily store and infiltrate stormwater.