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The circumstances under which different ecosystem service benefits can be realized differ. The benefits tend to be coproduced and to be enabled by multiple interacting social, ecological, and technological factors, which is particularly evident in cities. As many cities are undergoing rapid change, these factors need to be better understood and accounted for, especially for those most in need of benefits. We propose a framework of three systemic filters that affect the flow of ecosystem service benefits: the interactions among green, blue, and built infrastructures; the regulatory power and governance of institutions; and people’s individual and shared perceptions and values. We argue that more fully connecting green and blue infrastructure to its urban systems context and highlighting dynamic interactions among the three filters are key to understanding how and why ecosystem services have variable distribution, continuing inequities in who benefits, and the long-term resilience of the flows of benefits.

Water management in cities and villages is fraught with difficulties. Infrastructure systems that have been in use for a long time are deteriorating. In an urbanised landscape, appropriate rainwater management or blue green infrastructure (RWM or BGI) is the solution. The quality of water management is influenced significantly by urbanization. The higher the influence on the area’s hydrological cycle as an urbanised landscape develops without proper RWM, the greater the impact on the area’s hydrological cycle. The hydrology of the site reflects the changing environment of the area, as trees, meadows, and agricultural land, which captured and absorbed precipitation and created depressions in the area that temporarily held water, are being replaced by urbanised areas on a uniform slope with impermeable areas. Because the goal until recently was to drain rainwater from the urbanised area as rapidly as possible, the altered sites present the prospect of rapid conversion of rainwater into surface runoff of rainwater. The capabilities of currently utilised technical solutions in metropolitan areas, as well as the possibilities of their application, are discussed in this article. The paper focuses on the available literature on rainwater management by Slovak and foreign authors to get insight into the execution of measures in urban settings. The article’s major purpose is to provide appropriate rainwater management measures in the urbanised landscape based on characteristics deriving from the conditions in the study area and current understanding about rainwater management options.

Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect relates to the occurrence of a positive heat balance, compared to suburban and extra-urban areas in a high degree of urbanized cities. It is necessary to develop effective UHI prevention and mitigation strategies, one of which is blue-green infrastructure (BGI). Most research work comparing impact of BGI parameters on UHI mitigation is based on data measured in different climate zones. This makes the implication of nature-based solutions difficult in cities with different climate zones due to the differences in the vegetation time of plants. The aim of our research was to select the most statistically significant quality parameters of BGI elements in terms of preventing UHI. The normative four-step data delimitation procedure in systematic reviews related to UHI literature was used, and temperate climate (C) zone was determined as the UHI crisis area. As a result of delimitation, 173 publications qualified for literature review were obtained (488 rejected). We prepared a detailed literature data analysis and the CVA model—a canonical variation of Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Our research has indicated that the BGI object parameters are essential for UHI mitigation, which are the following: area of water objects and green areas, street greenery leaf size (LAI), green roofs hydration degree, and green walls location. Data obtained from the statistical analysis will be used to create the dynamic BGI modeling algorithm, which is the main goal of the series of articles in the future.

Urbanization transforms landscapes, increasing urban flooding risk due to changes in the water cycle. Urban planning should incorporate blue and green infrastructure (BGI) to integrate flood mitigation strategies within the landscape under a multifunctional approach. This work aims to develop, apply, and evaluate supportive tools to guide urban planning actions focused on effective urban drainage choices in a sustainable and resilient manner. An original multicriteria tool, named the Priority Matrix, combines gravity, urgency, and tendency assessments to define focal areas for drainage interventions. The index is applied to a selected watershed, leading to a critical analysis that generates guidelines for urban projects and identifies focal points for urban design. A multifunctional urban design intervention combining grey, blue, and green infrastructure was proposed for the site to achieve flood mitigation. The project was evaluated using a hydrological-hydrodynamic simulation tool, confirming the index's purpose and efficiency in selecting critical sites and informing discussions about local challenges. The evaluation demonstrated success in flood mitigation, illustrating the potential for creating multifunctional landscapes that incorporate social and ecological functions into effective urban drainage projects.

Blue green infrastructure (BGI) is widely implemented as an adaptive stormwater management measure at the household level to reduce flood risk. However, more greenery also raises water demand during droughts due to higher evapotranspiration. This study examines the impact of 14 commonly used BGI types on household water balance under climate projections in the Netherlands. Several scenarios were modeled, from a ‘Grey’ setup with no BGI to a ‘Greenest’ option with an intensive green roof, facade, and orchard. Intermediate configurations were also analyzed, representing more common household configurations. On a typical 100 m2 household plot, the ‘Greenest’ option results in an extra demand of 154.3 L/day. This exceeds the current average daily indoor water use of a typical household of 129 L/day. In contrast, intermediate setups with a native plant garden or fully grassed garden and a gray roof require 8.4 and 9.9 L/day, respectively. To meet 80% of the projected additional external water demand from intensified greenery, intermediate setups need up to 2.3 m3 of rainwater tank. The ‘Greenest’ option requires 14.9 m3 of water storage to achieve the same coverage, underscoring the challenge of balancing space for water harvesting systems and intensified greenery within a limited household plot.

Maintaining ecological connectivity is crucial for biodiversity, yet effectively managing interconnected areas through actor collaboration is challenging. This study examines collaboration through social–ecological fit in interconnected aquatic “blue” and terrestrial “green” areas, encompassing natural and semi‐natural elements, in human‐dominated landscapes. Combining species distribution models and connectivity analyses focused on declining amphibians and survey data on actors’ area management and collaboration within interconnected areas, we create a spatially explicit social–ecological network that we analyze using network models. Results highlight diverse ecological dependencies shaping actor interactions. Strong collaboration is observed in interconnected blue‐rural‐green areas, whereas blue‐urban‐green areas lack collaboration, with minor rivers and urban‐green spaces at the network's core plagued by social–ecological misfit. Strengthening collaboration in these areas is essential to prevent further ecological network degradation. Incorporating a spatially explicit social–ecological perspective covering diverse blue and green areas guides targeted interventions and fosters effective conservation policy and practice.

Blue green infrastructure (BGI), in recent decades, have been increasingly recognized as robust stormwater control measures to reduce urban flooding, promote infiltration, and restore a catchment's flow to its pre-development stage. However, studies comparing the hydrological benefits of BGI alternatives at catchment scale are often limited to single catchment or single/few BGI options scaled over a catchment. This study designed a set of BGI alternatives as a combination of different BGI facilities in terms of the following: (a) spatial distribution scale (end-of-pipe vs. decentralized) and (b) naturalness scale (less engineered vs. more engineered), in three different urban catchments representing an inner city, a residential suburb, and a new urban housing. In addition, their hydrological performances were compared. A 10-year return period design rain and a continuous rain series of 11 years were modelled for each BGI alternative using the computer model stormwater management model (SWMM). It was observed that in most catchments, decentralized alternatives (both engineered and natural) showed better potential to reduce the magnitude and frequency of flooding than centralized measures. Similarly, the tested decentralized natural, less engineered alternatives showed higher potential to increase infiltration than the decentralized engineered alternatives in all three catchments. Meanwhile, infiltration-based BGI alternatives showed similar potential to mimic pre-development flow as other decentralized BGI alternatives.

Understanding public perceptions of Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) is critical for addressing barriers to their implementation. Perceptions are typically evaluated using explicit measures (e.g. questionnaires) that are subject to biases and may not fully capture attitudes towards SuDS. A novel image-based application of the Implicit Association Test is developed to investigate unconscious perceptions of SuDS in public greenspace and combined with explicit tests to evaluate perceptions of greenspace with and without SuDS, focusing on a sample population in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Greenspace with or without SuDS is perceived positively by the sample population. Overall, respondents implicitly and explicitly prefer greenspace without SuDS and perceive greenspace without SuDS as more attractive, tidier and safer. The wide distribution of scores for SuDS, nonetheless, suggests a range of opinions and illustrates the complex nature of preferences for the use of greenspace. That the strongly negative explicit scores were not reflected in the implicit tests may suggest that explicit attitudes towards tidiness and safety may not be deep-rooted and are subject to social bias. Combined explicit and implicit tests may help us to understand any disconnect between expressed positive attitudes to natural spaces and behaviours around them and inform SuDS design to increase public acceptance. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Urban flood resilience’.

The protection and sustainable reuse of global industrial heritage have long been a widely concerned topic in the international community, and its existence is evidence of industrial development in various countries throughout history. As a historically significant hydraulic industrial heritage building in the eastern coastal region of China, many of them are currently underutilized or deteriorating. Traditional evaluation methods often overlook the role of public visual perception in guiding their sustainable revitalization. This study proposes an \"objective + subjective\" comprehensive framework for evaluating the visual perception and reuse potential of 32 coastal water heritage sites in eastern China, with a focus on providing information for the living preservation of historical buildings. Objective analysis employed drone photography, digital twin modeling (to address occluded elements), and semantic segmentation (DeepLabV3 + model) to extract six key visual indicators: Green Vegetation Index (GVI), Water Surface Index (WVI), Sky Coverage (SKVI), Hard Surface (HVI), Building Visibility (BVI), and Other Artificial Structures (OVI). Subjective data on perceptual dimensions—space, color, texture, uniqueness, culture, history, aesthetics, and pleasure—were collected via video-loop surveys (120 students) and online questionnaires (3,840 respondents) using a 5-point Likert scale. Multiple linear regression revealed that scenic beauty scores were most strongly predicted by GVI (β = 0.28, p < .001), WVI (β = 0.34, p < .001), and BVI (indicative of preserved heritage character). In contrast, SKVI, HVI, and OVI had limited influence. Among the sites, 14 were classified as high visual quality (≥ 35/40), 7 as medium, and 11 as low. The findings provide quantitative evidence to support the preservation of hydraulic heritage buildings through visual-centered living, promoting their continued cultural use through the integration of blue-green infrastructure and improved spatial aesthetics. The proposed framework offers a scalable and practical tool for policymakers and designers to enhance both the visual quality and sustainable reuse potential of linear industrial heritage, contributing to broader cultural sustainability goals.

Sustainability concerns and multiple socio-environmental pressures have necessitated a shift towards Sustainable Urban Water Management (SUWM) systems. Viewing SUWM systems as sociotechnical, this paper departs from eight factors previously identified by transition research: Pressures, Context, Purposes, Actors, Instruments, Processes, Outputs, and Outcomes as a methodological framework for a structured review of 100 articles. The study seeks to analyze empirical cases of planning and implementing SUWM systems worldwide. A wide range of public actors—driven by social and environmental factors rather than by economic pressures—have initiated SUWM projects so as to locally fulfill defined social and environmental purposes. We provide evidence on the emergence of new actors, such as experts, users, and private developers, as well as on the diverse and innovative technical and societal instruments used to promote and implement SUWM systems. We also explore their contexts and institutional capacity to deal with pressures and to mobilize significant financial and human resources, which is in itself vital for the transition to SUWM. Planned or implemented SUWM outputs are divided into green (wet ponds, raingardens, and green roofs) and gray (rain barrels and porous pavements) measures. The outcomes of SUWM projects—in terms of societal and technical learning, and their institutional uptakes—are often implicit or lacking, which seemingly reduces the rate of desirable change.