Stormwater Poland 2025 – Let’s meet at the halfway point!

In the daily life around us and the flurry of responsibilities, it is worth pausing from time to time to learn from the past and plan wisely for the future. In any journey, and especially at the halfway point, it is worth correcting the route, and in doing so, changing the means of travel to faster and safer ones. Since pre-industrial times, i.e. around 1850, the Earth’s average temperature has already risen by more than 1°C, and we are practically approaching about 1.5°C. This is not worth arguing over the exact figure, but to realize that we are close to half of the temperature increase projected by 2100 (to 2.8-3.5°C; consistent with the voluntary emissions reduction plan agreed upon in 2015 in the Paris Agreement by the nations of the world).

In such a place, at the proverbial halfway point, there is probably no one left who can deny climate change. Increasing amounts of very intense precipitation, often coupled with hailstorms, prolonged periods of deep droughts, or warmer winters, devoid of natural snowpack retention and exacerbating the effects of urban heat islands, are just selected unveilings of our new reality. The geopolitical tensions of recent years and the realities of the modern world are robbing us of illusions that there will be agreement and consistent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So the aforementioned halfway point is also the proverbial Point of No Return (PNR). There is no going back to the historic, former state of the climate for us and our children. In the face of global changes over which we have little influence, it is necessary to take action locally, to adapt to the changes that have already occurred and prepare for those to come.

The ninth edition of the Stormwater Poland 2025 conference

At the ninth edition of the cyclical Stormwater Poland 2025 conference in Poznan on March 25-26, 2025, we want to focus attention on a very important part of the adaptation challenge, concerning drainage systems, or the urban water circulation in a slightly broader sense. We believe that at the halfway point it is necessary to exchange experiences from past activities in the field of hydrology, especially urban hydrology, and draw conclusions for the coming years. We want to jointly develop best operating practices that will maximize the benefits of the investments already made in adapting drainage systems to climate change.

Looking to the future, we also want to hear from experts on what further climate change will look like and how it will affect urban infrastructure, particularly drainage systems. Finally, wiser with knowledge from past adaptation efforts and projections of further climate change, we want to jointly identify directions for the most effective actions for the future, including identifying engineering tools, technological and administrative-legal solutions, and operational practices.

All this, we believe, is possible when, following the example of previous conferences, there will be a meeting and discussion of representatives of those who oversee and coordinate national water management and environmental protection, including adaptation to climate change, operators of drainage systems, consultants providing services in this area, technology manufacturers and, of course, representatives of the world of science. Hence, the proposed slogan of the Stormwater Poland 2025 conference is Let’s meet at the halfway point! We address this slogan, as in previous years, not only to participants from Poland, but also from abroad. We are convinced that the problem is global and a global view of it is needed, also using foreign experience, although the resulting reflection should translate into local action.

Diversity of panels: from theory to practice

From the need to take action locally grows the first question of the conference: How to spread adaptation? The last seven years have identified Polish leaders in this area. These are most often large cities, less often medium and small towns. This is probably the aftermath of both greater potential and resources (including human capital), but also the requirement to draw up municipal climate change adaptation plans. As we recall, it originally applied to 44 cities over 100,000. residents. However, in 2024, the idea of introducing an analogous requirement for all cities with a population of more than 20,000, a total of 209 cities in the country, has emerged.

During this session, we want to bring together representatives from cities of all sizes where the process of adaptation of drainage systems has already begun and is producing measurable results. We want to contrast the statements of national leaders in climate change adaptation with the experiences of foreign keynote speakers to find out what factors have determined success. We believe that adaptation should also take place at a very local and low level, and be the result of various actors, including public-private partnerships.

At this conference, we also hope to hear answers from manufacturers of drainage system technology to three key questions. First, what product solutions that promote rainwater retention and in situ use they currently offer their customers. Second, how they intend to combine them with the requirements of blue-green infrastructure. And third, how they intend to change their production profile and how they see the role of innovation in spreading and facilitating the adaptation of drainage systems.

Finally, realizing that real action is strongly dependent on funding, we would like to ask experts to speak on specific opportunities to support investment in climate change adaptation of drainage and stormwater management systems with money from EU funds, including the European Regional Development Fund, the Cohesion Fund and the National Reconstruction Plan.

However, we believe that the key to success is not only the scale of the measures taken, measured by cubic meters of newly constructed retention tanks, the number of rain gardens constructed or kilometers of upgraded rainwater networks, but we strongly believe that the quantity of measures taken must be combined with quality. We would like to present good domestic and foreign practices that allow better, more effective and extended in time use of existing infrastructure.

Good examples of this are the increasingly strong trend of controlling the retention or infiltration of rainwater. We would like to draw particular attention to the important role of local monitoring and nocasting of precipitation, coupled with the measurement and prediction of the operating conditions of drainage systems. We expect the invited experts to address not only the current state of the art in this area, but to clearly indicate the perspective for the coming decades. It’s important to take thoughtful and optimal modernization measures for drainage systems.

The second expected line of debate in the session is the issue of combining adaptation, understood as reducing the threat of urban flooding, making cities more resilient to droughts and periods of high temperatures, with improving the quality of rainwater or snowmelt. This seems to be a key challenge, since only clean water can be considered a valuable resource, in any other case it will be an effluent that threatens local receiving bodies. In this context, we want to give the floor to practitioners who have managed to successfully use blue-green infrastructure solutions, as well as to scientists pursuing advanced research with high implementation potential.

We also want to hear again the voice of technology providers, who will present the best available solutions for pretreating and filtering rainwater, conditioning it during periods of prolonged detention, or implementing quality monitoring systems. Finally, in light of the requirement to scale up climate change adaptation measures, we plan to juxtapose in the discussion the need to improve rainwater quality with the need to reduce energy intensity and overall water management costs.

New, ambitious goals often require the use of entirely new tools. Climate change, translated into increases in gauge precipitation, has already changed the engineering workshop for designing drainage systems. As recently as five years ago, no one was even using a precipitation atlas for this purpose. The first climate change adaptation projects have forced the implementation of integrated modeling of surface runoff, flows in storm sewers and local receiving waters.

In addition, they have provided a rationale for sizing and modeling drainage systems using rainfall models with projected changes in precipitation by 2050, according to the default climate scenario RCP4.5. This entire workshop is a major advance, but it needs to be systematized and further developed. The question of the rationale of operating only with the 2050 outlook and the RCP4.5 scenario, rather than, for example, 2100 and the much less optimistic Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) SSP5-8.5, is already convincing?

Ensuring the sustainability of adaptation: priorities for the future

We would like to conclude the conference with an answer to the question: how to ensure the sustainability of adaptation? This question is rightly associated with ensuring the sustainability of EU projects. We, however, invite you to reflect together on how to ensure the operation and maintenance of urban drainage infrastructure in the next decades in the face of not only climate change, but also demographic or labor market challenges. We want this session to include speakers who have already taken on the challenge of not only taking responsibility for local drainage systems, but also their adaptation to climate change. We hope that their presentations, will help other cities realize the hierarchy of necessary actions and develop a roadmap for the future.

We hope that the proposed theme and agenda of the ninth edition of Stormwater Poland 2025 is a response to your current professional challenges and interests. Together with Aquanet and Aquanet Retention, we invite you to Poznan on March 25-26, 2025 for the largest stormwater conference in Poland!