New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 59

New Water Policy & Practice Journal • Volume 4, Number 1 • Fall 2017
Reviews of Sponge City in China
Introducing Yinxue Liu:
Y
inxue Liu—Postgraduate student of Bei-
jing Laboratory of Water Resources Se-
curity, Capital Normal University.
After graduating from Anhui University,
where majoring in Geography Information Sys-
tem (GIS), Yinxue did her postgraduate study in
2015 at Capital Normal University (CNU), Chi-
na. She is very interested in the new policy of sponge city construction in China
after observing the frequent flooding disasters in Beijing.
Based on her interests, she took up hydrology and water resource research
and joined water-related projects, including technical support system construc-
tion of urban typical infrastructure in flooding risk funded by Beijing Research
Center of Urban System Engineering and Multiply coupling of the eco-hydrolog-
ical modeling of a typical wetland plant in Sanjiang Plain funded by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China. Based on the project of urban flooding in
Beijing, Yinxue developed the research of assessing the roof greening potential of
Beijing and the potential hydrological performance of future green roofs on a city
scale. In this research, she combined the remote sensing images and integrated
spatial analysis of GIS with the hydrological model.
Also, during the three months of exchange study at Instituto Superior Técni-
co (IST), University of Lisbon in 2017, Yinxue participated in the project proposal
of urban water space in the metropolitan Beijing and Lisbon. The ongoing proj-
ect aims to conduct a comparative study by learning from each other about the
case studies of urban water space infrastructures in Beijing and Lisbon. There are
leading research studies in water policy in IST, whereas GIS and remote sensing
knowledge is strong in CNU. The outcome of the future joint project between IST
and CNU will give a comparative example of the urban water in developed and
developing countries.
Currently, she focuses on the study of mitigating flooding in low-lying areas
in Beijing, especially the flooding in underpasses. How much can green infra-
structure (GI) helps in preventing flooding in low-lying areas where runoff easily
converges and the drainage usually relies on the pump stations. Yinxue works as
a researcher who aims to contribute to the construction of sponge city in China.
Cooperation with European countries can accelerate the research study as they are
leading the world in urban water areas such as the advanced framework of water
policy, rainwater harvesting, and the popularity of green roofs. In the National
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doi: 10.18278/nwpp.4.1.6