Bhubaneswar: In order to develop the catchment area of the Drainage Channel No. 10 with a role model of “Sponge City and improve the situation in Nayapalli area during rains, the second urban design thinking exercise on storm water management, organized a multi-agency workshop today with field visit and discussion on a pilot survey of storm water and construction and demolition waste management around the Drainage Channels No. 10 and 5. The two-day event will also continue tomorrow. The workshop is being held in order to devise a framework to manage the rainwater in private as well as institutional land before their release into nearby drain so that there could be less pressure of water flow in the drainage channel, ground water recharge and cooling effect in the environment due to more water retention in the land area. Organised jointly by Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), German cooperation agency GIZ and Technology University Berlin, students from institutions like KIIT School of Planning and Architecture and Xavier School of Human Settlements were also present besides urban planners and officials of BMC, Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited and Bhubaneswar Development Authority. The inaugural note was given by BMC Additional Commissioner Surath Chandra Mallick and Programme Manager of Climate Smart Cities Vaishali Nandan. BMC Deputy Commissioner (Sanitation) Suvendu Kumar Sahoo and Assistant Executive Engineer (Drainage) of BMC Gautam Chandra Das were also present. The workshop series of which the first one was held during summer last year, aims at imagining climate sensitive urban design from a users perspective. Todays workshop was to develop design principles for Nayapalli area to create a pilot on the “Sponge City concept. The participants also went on a field trip identifying the problems of the users and locals and also making a prototype. They also discussed how the neighborhoods of Nayapalli be retrofitted with a design approach that would help in reducing the amount of rainwater from immediate discharge into the nearby drains by better management of the runoff with scientific management of open spaces so that the impacts of climate change would be reduced. The workshop also discussed a survey conducted by the students of KIIT School of Planning and Architecture with a sample size of 142 including housewives, vendors, children and slum residents. Related Comments comments

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