Enhancing the water cycle restoration of LID practices considering climate change: A case study on permeable pavement planning by an iterative MCDM model

Abstract Low-impact development (LID) measures have been popularly installed in many developed countries for urban runoff control and treatment. However, precipitation and temperature changes driven by climate change lead to water cycle deterioration, especially in urban watersheds. It is important to optimize LID implementations aimed at rehabilitating the water cycle in urban watersheds for climate change adaptation. To enhance the water cycle restoration of LID practices according to climate change, an iterative multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach is proposed to allocate permeable pavement areas while considering newly released climate change scenarios. Daily precipitation, maximum temperature, and minimum temperature were considered for the future climate environment estimated using 15 coupled model intercomparison project (CMIP) 6 general circulation models (GCMs) according to two scenarios for shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The hydrological impact on the permeable pavement application was simulated using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). The priority of each microlevel unit for permeable pavement was robustly determined using combined MCDM methods. According to the derived priorities, every unit area of permeable pavement was iteratively allocated until it converged to the initially planned total permeable pavement area. The results of this study confirmed that different climate predictions for each GCM can affect the priority results. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the iterative process used in this study improved the water cycle restoration more efficiently than when allocating at once according to priority. The results of this study can help determine the robust LID capacity for each sub-watershed under limited resources.