Sustainable Drainage Out of the Temperate Zone: The Humid Tropics

This chapter presents progress in India, Colombia, Chile and particularly Malaysia, where sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) have been embraced and redesigned to take account of their specific climatic and ecological problems. Design of SuDS needs to take account of the climate, whereby regular intense short-duration storms, allied with the high temperatures extant in these regions, mean that short-term storage of large volumes of water is a key factor. In order to address specific concerns associated with the Malaysian climate and ecology, bio-ecological drainage system (BIOECODS) was developed by the River Engineering and Urban Drainage Research Centre (REDAC) and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Several of these BIOECODS management trains have been implemented in Malaysia, but the following three case studies, USM, the Taiping Health Clinic and the rehabilitation of previous mining ponds, have been the most thoroughly described.