From 7–11 September 2025, CARDIMED partners alchemia-nova, IRIDRA and Università di Catania represented the project at WETPOL2025, the International Symposium on Wetland Pollutant Dynamics and Control held in Gdańsk, Poland. This biennial conference is a leading global forum for advancing science and practice in wetlands, stormwater management, and pollution control, topics that lie at the heart of several CARDIMED Demonstration Sites (DEMO 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9).
Sustainable Drainage Systems in Action: Gdańsk’s Model Policy
One of the highlights of the conference was the excursion organised by Gdańsk Water, which showcased the city’s pioneering policy on Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS). In public tenders, developers must design projects to retain the first 30 mm of rainfall on-site, preferably through green infrastructure. In areas where safe discharge is constrained, this retention target rises to 60 mm. Only surplus water is routed first to rainwater harvesting storage and then to the municipal stormwater system.
This simple yet effective design rule has proven to be a powerful lever for accelerating SuDS uptake, strengthening urban flood resilience, mitigating urban heat islands, and reducing long-term infrastructure costs—all while improving liveability.
For CARDIMED, Gdańsk’s enforceable SuDS framework offers a replicable blueprint for other European and Mediterranean cities seeking scalable solutions for climate adaptation. It demonstrates how clear retention targets, green-first design logic, and structured routing hierarchies can translate into fast, impactful deployment of Nature-based Solutions (NbS).
