Courtney Crosson to Present to Pima County

Friday, October 5, 2018

Architecture Assistant Professor Courtney Crosson will present, "Innovating the Urban Water System: Decentralized Approaches to Stormwater Mitigation" as part of Pima County Regional Flood District’s monthly Brown Bag Series Wednesday, October 10 from 12-1 pm at the 9th floor 201 North Stone Ave.

“Globally, cities are facing increased water stress under growing populations, degrading infrastructure, and changing climate patterns.  This imbalance between available water resources and projected urban water demands presents tremendous challenges for water resource management, necessitating novel planning and design strategies and tools.  Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been pointed to as one partial answer; however, the capacity of such a solution to address urban water deficits had been largely untested.  This talk will investigate two components of decentralized water infrastructure’s ability to meet urban water stress: network capacity and regulatory restriction.  First, the talk will discuss recent research that evaluates the capacity of Tucson, Arizona to become water independent using rainwater.  Remote sensing, localized daily rainfall, and municipal water meter data were used to construct a dynamic model of the city’s potential passive and active RWH network.  Second, the talk discusses the regulatory hurdles to make such infrastructure a reality at a commercial scale."