The development of the stormwater management strategies, e.g., low-impact development (LID), water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), and sustainable drainage solutions (SUDS), was initiated in the mid-1980s as a set of engineering approaches and technologies to reduce the harmful effects of stormwater. Over time, all of them evolved in the holistic, multidisciplinary approaches and, today, they are increasingly viewed and implemented under the umbrella term “Nature-based Solutions” (NbS). The technical elements and measures of these NbS represent various technical solutions, implemented i.a., according to the suitability of the site to achieve their maximum efficiency. Currently, there are no standards or procedures for the application of NbS technologies in Serbia. To overpass this and encourage implementation, we carried out preliminary assessment of NbS elements suitability for application in eight urban settlements in the Region of Southern and Eastern Serbia. The assessment is based on publicly available data and performed according to the existing recommendations in the field of spatial planning and rainwater management for WSUD. The analyses were conducted by GIS tools that involved spatial analyses of various terrain characteristics and provided an insight into the criteria, i.e., constraints that are key to the placement of various technical elements, including bioretention, rain garden, and permeable pavement. Research findings point out that creation of the thematic maps with area suitability ratings for individual NbS stormwater elements might represent a good starting point for further investigation, planning, and design. The proposed framework for preliminary assessment is potentially useful for the countries and regions without regulations in the field of NbS for stormwater management.
Flood quantile estimation in ungauged basins is often performed using regional analysis. A regionalization procedure consists of two phases: the definition of homogeneous regions among gauged basins, i.e., clusters of stations, and information transfer to the ungauged sites. Due to its simplicity and widespread use, a combination of hierarchical clustering by Ward’s algorithm and the index-flood method is applied in this research. While hierarchical clustering is very efficient, its shortcomings are the lack of flexibility in the definition of clusters/regions and the inability to transfer objects/stations from one cluster center to another. To overcome this, using silhouette width for induced clustering of stations in flood studies is proposed in this paper. A regionalization procedure is conducted on 53 gauging stations under a continental climate in the West Balkans. In the induced clustering, a negative silhouette width is used as an indicator for the relocation of station(s) to another cluster. The estimates of mean annual flood and 100-year flood quantiles assessed by the original and induced clustering are compared. A jackknife procedure is applied for mean annual flood estimation and 100-year flood quantiles. Both the Hosking–Wallis and Anderson–Darling bootstrap tests provide better results regarding the homogeneity of the defined regions for the induced clustering compared to the original one. The goodness-of-fit measures indicate improved clustering results by the proposed intervention, reflecting flood quantile estimation at the stations with significant overestimation by the original clustering.
Changes in the hydrological regime are widely investigated using a variety of approaches. In this study, we assess changes in annual and seasonal flow characteristics based on a probabilistic representation of the seasonal runoff regime at the daily time scale. The probabilistic seasonal runoff pattern is constructed by determining quantiles from marginal distributions of daily flows for each day within the year. By applying Fourier transformation on the statistics of the daily flow partial series, we obtain smooth periodical functions of distribution parameters over the year and consequently of the quantiles. The main findings are based on the comparison of the dry, average, and wet hydrologic condition zones as defined by the daily flow quantiles of selected probabilities. This analysis was conducted for ten catchments in Serbia by considering changes between two 30-year nonoverlapping periods, 1961–1990 and 1991–2020. It was found that the relative change in runoff volume is the most pronounced in the extreme dry condition zone in the winter season (−33% to 34%). The annual time shift is the largest in the dry and average condition zones, ranging from −11 to 12 days. The applied methodology is not only applicable to the detection of hydrologic change, but could also be used in operational hydrology and extreme flow studies via drought indices such as the Standardized Streamflow Index.
Optimizing the use of resources plays a significant role in the concept of development and functioning of smart cities. This especially applies to the rational consumption of energy and water use. At the same time, the application of information technologies, databases, optimization models and other techniques and technologies becomes indispensable for the implementation of the water management strategy and the preparation of information for decision-making in that area. In addition, the introduction of sensors and automated systems makes it possible to obtain the necessary data, to respond in a timely manner, and thereby improves the functioning of the city. This approach is applied in newly formed cities that have been built as smart cities since their foundation. Part of solutions is also current in already existing European cities, which will be analyzed in the work on the examples of several cities. The aim of this review and familiarization with different solutions is the potential application in Serbia, which would contribute to considering the possibility of creating resilient cities through rational management of water as a key resource of the future.
Eighteen low flow indicators are considered in the research of sixteen hydrological stations in the Juzna Morava river basin. The indicators are estimated by statistical analysis and grouped as hydrological and environmental indicators. A crosscorrelation between all indicators is assessed. Environmental flows at hydrologic stations are obtained by the GEP method. The environmental low flow indicators are transferred to two small ungauged basins by regression with physiographic characteristics. The adjustment of environmental flows at ungauged basins is performed according to locations of the donor stations in the hydrogeological regions of the studied area.