Exploring social perception on Sustainable Drainage Systems: insights from practitioners and academics

Abstract

Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) have arisen as popular green stormwater infrastructure, developing a wide variety of research and practice internationally. Nevertheless, the perception from practitioners and academics about SuDS from a technical and social viewpoint still is an unexplored area in the field. There have been several attempts to describe the current state of SuDS in several countries, highlighting the need for international surveys to establish the level of implementation and knowledge about SuDS internationally, whilst new methodologies are required to confer mathematical robustness to these questionnaires and their hypotheses. This research proposes the use of the partial least square and structural equations model (PLS-SEM) using the SmartPLS methodology to explore the social perception from practitioners and academics about SuDS knowledge and how latent variables such as cost-benefit, barriers and opportunities for implementation relate to that knowledge. The survey was completed by 232 experts across the world. Results exhibited that the geographical area significantly influenced the perception of the level of knowledge about SuDS implementation strategies, noting the general absence of maintenance and monitoring activities. Permeable pavements, swales and raingardens were outlined as the most utilised SuDS techniques. The structural model proposed was validated in the survey, checking its goodness-of-fit, allowing the acceptation of the hypotheses, becoming a method that could be transferred to any territory.