Imagine the ground acting like a giant sponge that soaks up heavy rain and lets it out slowly during dry spells. Instead of water rushing into drains and causing floods, this method uses nature and smart engineering to keep water in the soil. It helps keep the land healthy and protects towns from extreme weather.
Communities and businesses face increasing financial losses from floods and droughts due to poor landscape water retention. Current drainage systems often fail to handle extreme weather events, leading to infrastructure damage and crop loss.
A set of nature-based water retention strategies and improved open-source hydrological modelling tools for landscape-scale impact assessment.
If you are a drainage firm dealing with urban flash floods — this project developed a set of nature-based solutions and engineered constructions that lower flood risks. It provides methods to map opportunities for water retention based on local geology and soil.
If you are a farm manager dealing with soil moisture loss during droughts — this project developed strategies to maintain groundwater levels. It uses data from 14 European case studies to improve soil moisture at a landscape scale.
If you are a consultant dealing with climate resilience planning for municipalities — this project developed open source hydrological modelling tools. These tools allow you to quantify the impact of water retention strategies under future climate scenarios.
Based on available project data, specific pricing or implementation costs are not provided.
Yes, the project specifically focuses on upscaling individual measures to a landscape scale across 14 diverse European case studies.
The project focuses on improving state-of-the-art, open source (geo-)hydrological modelling tools.
SpongeScapes aligns with EU policies on climate adaptation, water management, and sustainable land use.
The project period runs from 2023-10-01 to 2027-09-30, suggesting full results will be available by late 2027.
The consortium consists of 10 partners from 8 countries, showing a strong European reach. It is heavily weighted toward research and academia (4 universities and 2 research institutes), with a low industry ratio of 10% (1 industry partner and 2 SMEs). This suggests the output is currently more scientific than commercial, though the inclusion of Deltares as coordinator provides strong technical leadership.
Contact Stichting Deltares in the Netherlands
Contact us to find a partner for implementing these water retention strategies in your region.
