The agenda is currently being prepared. Details of the presentations will be available soon.
It is no longer just a series of conferences but a chronicle of the evolution of a field that has gained new significance and standing in Poland. During these 11-th years, we have learned that stormwater is not a marginal aspect of water management, but its beating heart – one of the key factors shaping the everyday life of our cities. We have witnessed how streets, squares, and parks have changed, and how more and more municipalities recognize that managing rainwater is an investment in safety, quality of life, and resilience to climate change.
Over the past few years, we have learned a great deal about stormwater management. Retention, rain gardens, green roofs, infiltration basins, hydrodynamic modelling, monitoring and control of drainage systems are no longer solutions known only to a narrow group of specialists. They are increasingly becoming part of urban investment. Yet implementing more solutions is no longer enough. The key question is – can we connect them into one efficient water management system?
Water does not know where the responsibility of a water supply company ends and that of a municipal greenery office begins, where a road authority is responsible for the issue and where it falls to the city administration. Nor does water stop at a municipality’s administrative boundary. It flows according to the terrain and the logic of the catchment. And yet our cities still often manage individual elements of this system separately.
We want Stormwater Poland 2027 to be devoted precisely to connecting these worlds. Underground and blue-green infrastructure. Hydrology and urban planning. Investment and operation. Data and decisions. The city and its surrounding catchment. And finally – flood safety and water security.
If a drainage system consists at the same time of a pipe managed by a water utility, a park managed by a municipal greenery authority, a street under the responsibility of a road authority, and retention solutions implemented by the city administration – who actually manages urban stormwater? Do decisions made by different entities add up to one coherent city policy? And how to make sure such a fragmented system is efficient?
An equally important topic is the increasingly common separation of combined sewer systems and, consequently, cleaner rivers in our cities. This year Paris joined Copenhagen, while in Poland Bydgoszcz is leading the way. Cleaning up an urban river and giving it back to residents is another step in the development of our cities.
We want to confront ambition with practice and show not only how to build a sponge city, but above all how to make sure it continues to work for decades to come.
The circumstances of one municipality are always affected by the situation of its neighbours. We therefore want to show both what data cities need, and which technical and digital solutions make it possible to move from reacting to anticipating issues and consciously managing urban hydrology.
We want to devote the final session to a prospect that, until recently, might have seemed like the plot of a science-fiction film. We will ask a fundamental question – are we prepared not only for too much water, but also for a genuine shortage of it?
From the very beginning Stormwater Poland has been a meeting place for people who look at water from different perspectives. Every year 400+ experts, originating from various cities, institutions, geographies and companies meet to share know-how, discuss and network. This is also how we want to shape the 2027 edition.
We invite cities, water and wastewater utilities, representatives of public administration, greenery offices and road authorities, institutions responsible for water management, designers, specialists in SUDs and landscape architects, researchers and technology providers.
We do not want to limit ourselves to presenting more best practices. We also want to talk about what does not work, where conflicts of responsibility arise, which investments prove difficult to maintain, what data is still missing, and what decisions need to be made today so that cities are safer in five, ten or fifteen years. Because the next stage of adaptation is no longer a single reservoir, rain garden, sewer or computer model. It is the ability to manage the entire urban water cycle as one system. This is exactly the kind of city we want to discuss at Stormwater Poland 2027.
We invite you both to attend the conference and to shape this conversation – by sharing your experience, questions, challenges, best practices and solutions that may inspire others. We invite you also to learn from our previous editions, by looking at our website or at RetencjaPL youtube, where you may find over 400 recorded talks, discussions and presentations.
Let us meet at Stormwater Poland 2027. Water does not recognise the boundaries between departments, companies or cities – and so should effective water management.