"Co-create" approach to reduce flood risk in urban areas; testing Hydrological Communities (HC) in Brussels (Belgium

The action-research project "BRUSSEAU”, studies the integration of alternative rainwater management methods in Brussels (Belgium), with the aim to increase flood resiliency in the city in the face of increasing risk of flood. Joining together researchers, field actors and inhabitants of targeted municipalities, these collaborative merging (or Living Labs) are referred to as Hydrological Communities. Together, we explore increasing issues of water management in an urban context and model solutions through four co-creative methodologies. “WaterCitiSense” aims to implement tools for measuring hydrological flows in public and private space, as well as their appropriation by the inhabitants and thereby their involvement in a scientific diagnosis. “Water Islands” involves the development of workshop cycles in the private space where residents and architects will think together of devices aimed at a more sustainable urban block, in hydrological terms. The design of “New Urban Rivers”, starting from collaborative cartography workshops intents to engage into valid and achievable proposals in terms of rainwater management. The “Historical Approach” aims to feed the understanding of current flooding phenomena by looking in the archives for the traces of old watercourses and surface urban development (communication routes, buildings) and underground (sewer network, pipes) that have participated in modifying the water trajectory in Brussels. The union of these elements made it possible to bring out solid and coherent proposals, deriving directly from the HC, and which result in a set of hydrological devices landscape installations of low technological intensity within the public space. While constituting a robust advocacy for the added value of citizen knowledge on their own environment, the close collaboration between project partners and the inhabitants allowed to develop a new form of expertise, as well as to demonstrate the effectiveness of decentralised and participative systems for rainwater management.