Greenery functions contribute to healthy living for citizens. Densely populated urban area's all over the World intend to prepare for future droughts periods by accessing new urban water sources for blue green infrastructure and greenery functions. An innovative opportunity of accessing fresh water in urban area's during periodical climate change enforced droughts is the so called Sewer Water Harvesting (SWH). Within the NWO program AquaConnect a demonstration case for the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region investigates the possibility and applicability of water harvesting from the urban sewage system. During droughts, the urban sewage systems are expected to act as a reliable and only available source of fresh water by quantity, not quality. Rain water buffers are empty and surface water becoming increasingly brackish. Therefore, new concepts need to be developed that allow water mining from urban sewage systems that can extract a suitable water quality for greenery functions and maybe also for urban agriculture functions. The paper describes the method and outcomes of a demonstration project at the Marineterrein Amsterdam and discusses sustainability and applicability The Water Harvesting Demonstrator consist of a mobile SWH installation containing of sewer water extraction pump, screening, fine drum sieving, direct nano filtration (400 Dalton removal) and optional UV disinfection with a capacity of 1 m3/h to produce irrigation water for Amsterdam's Park area's when and were needed. The paper elaborates on the technical conditions of the installations regarding recovery of water, energy demand and chemical use as well as on water quality analysis on feed water and product water to investigate the treatment performances and compliance to water reuse standards. The first results from the demonstrator indicate that SWH can provide a new and reliable water source during dry periods to support SWH. From an engineering perspective, challenges related to the water quality are unlikely to be insurmountable. With a water recovery percentage of 56% producing a bacteria and virus free irrigation containing less than 5 mg/L BOD, 0 mg/L TSS, 0.7 mg/L total-Phosphorous 12 mg/L NH4 and 14 mg/L total-Nitrogen the performance look very promising. Further water quality testing will be carried out in 2023. Additionally, three aspects still require further investigation: (1) currently there is a lack of regulatory framework, (2) responsibility for operation and ownership are unclear, and (3) extensive water quality testing and environmental impact assessment is needed. To accelerate innovation it is recommended to start as soon as possible with addressing these remaining issues. Commercial operation of SWH can provide an interesting opportunity, all the more so because SWH can also be used for household or industrial applications. The involvement of a wider variety of stakeholders can further help to overcome the remaining.

Climate adaptation in cities: transitioning to green infrastructure. The challenges related to the consequences of climate change in cities have pushed municipalities to assess their capacity to withstand extreme climate events such as heat waves, drought, storms and floods, air pollution, and subsequential impact of the generalized environmental degradation. These issues are already impacting cities significantly, prompting them to implement mitigation and adaptation strategies. In this scenario, efforts and resources tend to be largely directed to reinforce hard/grey infrastructure, but not only has this been insufficient in withstanding extreme weather events, it reinforces patterns of urbanization that have conditioned the unsustainable state of cities. On the other hand, ecological thinking in city design and Nature Based Solutions have also been explored as strategies to improve resilience and quality of life in cities. There are many levels and scales where these strategies can be implemented and benefit the city, addressing specific conditions in different areas, especially when developed as an infrastructure system. The concept of Green Infrastructure has been used in urban planning as a multi-scale instrument to support ecological functions that essential for the city since the XIX century (MELL, 2010; BENEDICT, 2001; FOSTER, 2011). Identifying opportunities of establishing green infrastructure requires a multiscale approach to understanding the territory, beginning with the characterization of the geomorphological characteristics of the city, but also of its socioeconomic and spatial dynamics, as a way of recognizing vulnerabilities and opportunities to be addressed in conjunction with another. We will present a spatial analysis of spaces that could potentially be articulated as Green Infrastructure in São Paulo, a megacity with diverse socioeconomic and physical conditions, and reflect on the role that Green Infrastructure could play in the adaptation to climate change. Key words: spatial analysis, urban resilience, nature based solutions.

Future planning in developing Indian cities is as dynamic as her rivers. Global South cities will become front-and-center during this century as they become crucibles of global trade & development. For my MSc. thesis, therefore, I wanted to study one aspect of this in my home country, India. Rather unexpected on the global stage, groundwater is a critically stressed resource in the fertile plains of the holy river Ganga as regions are rapidly extracting groundwater for agricultural & urbanization needs. Another trend to note in India is the nature of urbanization – agriculture is set to grow just as rapidly as urbanization in cities. One might expect a rural exodus into nearby cities as regions develop, but this model doesn’t hold everywhere. One example is the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, crucial to the global food trade as it produces critical crops for import & export. UP’s cities are growing in density while rural regions are simultaneously growing in their agricultural production. This has a direct impact on groundwater consumption since a growing city like Moradabad & its surrounding agriculture is 100% reliant on groundwater. The underground aquifer does not discriminate between rural & urban, thus groundwater overuse by one side equally impacts both sides when the resource runs dry. This dynamic now demands a new way of thinking about cities & rural areas – a reinvention of critical resource planning for cities. My research studies groundwater sustainability in the Ramganga river basin of northern India in partnership with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). This region experiences a trifecta of hydrological stressors from groundwater over-extraction, frequent flooding during wet seasons, and agricultural droughts during dry seasons. There is a growing body of interventions known as Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) which attempts to co-manage these concerns. One example is a technology known as Underground Transfer of Floods for Irrigation (UTFI) proposed by IWMI. The most common mode of UTFI is recharge ponds. A holistic approach encompassing rural and urban (R & U) to plan for the implementation of groundwater recharge structures is missing. Considering this, this work analyzes opportunities and barriers for UTFI’s scale-up in growing rural-urban regions of the Ramganga basin by unpacking rural-urban linkages. Through mixed methods of qualitative & quantitative, I propose a holistic R+U approach for land-use planning to incorporate recharge infrastructures and in so doing, identify rural & urban implementation zones like existing ponds and parks for mixed interventions. These recommendations are useful for planners, and specific spatial, community, institutional, and planning strategies are aimed at IWMI’s use when they work in India & similar groundwater-stressed regions globally.