DefinePK

Abstract

The expanding urban landscape has significant hydrological implications. Considerable studies have explored the use of porous pavements to mitigate urban hydrology including how porous pavements impact the permeability of urban surfaces and pollution. The current systematic review synthesizes available literature in the past ten years. The paper reviews findings on the hydrological performance of porous pavements on storm water management and pollution control. The selected studies comprised field experiments, laboratory experiments, and simulations published in the past 10 years. Overall, porous pavements were presented as able to significantly mitigate runoff and offer better storm water management. Further, the review found extensive evidence on the pollution control capability of porous pavements. While the different studies evaluated- based on different settings and unique variables- offered different quantitative results, there was a positive trend in the results. That is, regarding storm water management, porous pavements were found to increase infiltration, reduce run-off and peak discharges, and have similar hydrological effects. On pollution control, there was considerable evidence especially on non-dissolving pollutants such as suspended solids. The review found that while there was a general positivity in the adoption of permeable pavements, there was considerable fragmentation of knowledge of pervious pavements. Accordingly, more effort is needed to better define adoption and application guidelines across the board. That is; performance mechanism for different soils, loading, pollutant characteristic, and similar hydrological and structural parameters.