Peter Marcus Bach

Last Name

Bach

First Name

Peter Marcus

ORCID

0000-0001-5799-6185

Organisational unit

01109 - Lehre Bau, Umwelt und Geomatik

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Publications 1 - 10 of 20

Understanding spatiotemporal variability of in-stream water quality in urban environments – A case study of Melbourne, Australia
Shi, Baiqian; Bach, Peter Marcus; Lintern, Anna; et al. (2019)
Journal of Environmental Management
Linking human impacts to community processes in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems
McFadden, Ian R.; Sendek, Agnieszka; Brosse, Morgane; et al. (2023)
Ecology Letters
Human impacts such as habitat loss, climate change and biological invasions are radically altering biodiversity, with greater effects projected into the future. Evidence suggests human impacts may differ substantially between terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, but the reasons for these differences are poorly understood. We propose an integrative approach to explain these differences by linking impacts to four fundamental processes that structure communities: dispersal, speciation, species-level selection and ecological drift. Our goal is to provide process-based insights into why human impacts, and responses to impacts, may differ across ecosystem types using a mechanistic, eco-evolutionary comparative framework. To enable these insights, we review and synthesise (i) how the four processes influence diversity and dynamics in terrestrial versus freshwater communities, specifically whether the relative importance of each process differs among ecosystems, and (ii) the pathways by which human impacts can produce divergent responses across ecosystems, due to differences in the strength of processes among ecosystems we identify. Finally, we highlight research gaps and next steps, and discuss how this approach can provide new insights for conservation. By focusing on the processes that shape diversity in communities, we aim to mechanistically link human impacts to ongoing and future changes in ecosystems.
A Cellular Automata Fast Flood Evaluation (CA‐ffé) Model
Jamali, Behzad; Bach, Peter Marcus; Cunningham, Luke; et al. (2019)
Water Resources Research
Green Infrastructures for Urban Water System: Balance between Cities and Nature
Sitzenfrei, Robert; Kleidorfer, Manfred; Bach, Peter Marcus; et al. (2020)
Water
Urban water systems face severe challenges such as urbanisation, population growth and climate change. Traditional technical solutions, i.e., pipe-based, grey infrastructure, have a single purpose and are proven to be unsustainable compared to multi-purpose nature-based solutions. Green Infrastructure encompasses on-site stormwater management practices, which, in contrast to the centralised grey infrastructure, are often decentralised. Technologies such as green roofs, walls, trees, infiltration trenches, wetlands, rainwater harvesting and permeable pavements exhibit multi-functionality. They are capable of reducing stormwater runoff, retaining stormwater in the landscape, preserving the natural water balance, enhancing local climate resilience and also delivering ecological, social and community services. Creating multi-functional, multiple-benefit systems, however, also warrants multidisciplinary approaches involving landscape architects, urban planners, engineers and more to successfully create a balance between cities and nature. This Special Issue aims to bridge this multidisciplinary research gap by collecting recent challenges and opportunities from on-site systems up to the watershed scale.
Integrating CFD-GIS modelling to refine urban heat and thermal comfort assessment
Back, Yannick; Kumar, Prashant; Bach, Peter Marcus; et al. (2023)
Science of The Total Environment
Constant urban growth exacerbates the demand for residential, commercial and traffic areas, leading to progressive surface sealing and urban densification. With climate change altering precipitation and temperature patterns worldwide, cities are exposed to multiple risks, demanding holistic and anticipatory urban planning strategies and adaptive measures that are multi-beneficial. Sustainable urban planning requires comprehensive tools that account for different aspects and boundary conditions and are capable of mapping and assessing crucial processes of land-atmosphere interactions and the impacts of adaptation measures on the urban climate system. Here, we combine Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Geographic Information System (GIS) capabilities to refine an existing 2D urban micro- and bioclimatic modelling approach. In particular, we account for the vertical and horizontal variability in wind speed and air temperature patterns in the urban canopy layer. Our results highlight the importance of variability of these patterns in analysing urban heat development, intensity and thermal comfort at multiple heights from the ground surface. Neglecting vertical and horizontal variability, non-integrated CFD modelling underestimates mean land surface temperature by 7.8 °C and the Universal Thermal Climate Index by 6.9 °C compared to CFD-integrated modelling. Due to the strong implications of wind and air temperature patterns on the relationship between surface temperature and human thermal comfort, we urge caution when relying on studies solely based on surface temperatures for urban heat assessment and hot spot analysis as this could lead to misinterpretations of hot and cool spots in cities and, thus, mask the anticipated effects of adaptation measures. The integrated CFD-GIS modelling approach, which we demonstrate, improves urban climate studies and supports more comprehensive assessments of urban heat and human thermal comfort to sustainably develop resilient cities.
Using satellite imagery to investigate Blue-Green Infrastructure establishment time for urban cooling
Gobatti, Lucas; Bach, Peter Marcus; Scheidegger, Andreas; et al. (2023)
Sustainable Cities and Society
The process of urbanization can alter the local climate to the point that it threatens citizens’ well-being by creating heat-related hazards. The construction of Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) can improve the regulation of surface energy exchange processes and address this problem. However, the time needed for a BGI to deliver a stable cooling performance, referred to here as the Cooling Establishment Time (CET), is poorly understood and quantified in the literature and dependent on environmental, design and maintenance factors. Here, we analyze the feasibility of using satellite data to derive the CET for different BGIs across the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Results showed that remote sensing can quantify the land surface temperature impact of BGIs and assist in estimating their CET. BGI with trees or climbing plants required a longer CET (seven to ten years) before any notable shift in surface temperatures were visible, while grasses or artificial irrigated systems led to shorter CETs (one to three years). These results allow us to better account for BGI cooling establishment when planning for areas that need urgent action under warming climates. This work supports evidence-based urban greenery planning and design towards cooling our increasingly warming cities in a timely manner.
Impact of soil moisture content on urban tree evaporative cooling and human thermal comfort
Gobatti, Lucas; Bach, Peter Marcus; Maurer, Max; et al. (2025)
npj Urban Sustainability
Urban temperatures are rising, and urban trees can help mitigate the consequences of heat stress. However, the influence of water availability on the evaporative cooling efficiency of trees across diverse urban settings remains insufficiently understood. We modelled how varying soil moisture, built environment and tree amounts affect human thermal comfort. Our results show that increasing tree cover and maintaining high soil moisture through irrigation can generate areas of 'no thermal stress' in Zurich during an average summer day, primarily via direct soil evaporation and in less dense Local Climate Zones. In denser built environments and without enough soil moisture, achieving such thermal comfort proved more challenging. On extreme summer days, however, even extensive tree planting and full irrigation were insufficient to alleviate heat stress, indicating the need for additional adaptation strategies. Our study underscores the critical but limited role of tree planting and water management in mitigating urban heat, offering practical recommendations for green infrastructure managers.
A drainage network-based impact matrix to support targeted blue-green-grey stormwater management solutions
Li, Shanshan; Leitão, João P.; Wang, Zhaoli; et al. (2024)
Science of The Total Environment
Urban floods will continue to be an alarming issue worldwide due to climate change and urban expansion. The costly and less environmentally friendly grey infrastructure is not always the most adequate solution to resolve urban pluvial flooding issues. The combination of grey and blue-green infrastructures, also called hybrid infrastructure, has been considered a promising solution for urban stormwater management. Existing approaches for identifying suitable hybrid solutions frequently rely on global multi-objective optimization algorithms. We developed a pre-screening method that decomposes a drainage network into clusters of pipes connected to sub-catchments, based on pipe hydraulic characteristic that allows for the impact of infrastructure combinations (blue-green and grey) to be mapped. Four impact matrices are proposed to map the total, local, upstream, and downstream flood reduction of all possible blue-green, grey, and hybrid solutions. Using an urban catchment in Guangzhou (China) as a case study, results showed that such an exercise could identify prime candidate locations for blue-green and grey infrastructure while filtering out ineffective locations for flood reduction. Furthermore, the impact matrices enabled the identification of flood zones where blue-green infrastructure could handle flood mitigation without the need of local grey infrastructure upgrades. As such, they are not only useful for quick screening of suitable interventions for each flooded zone, but can also potentially serve as a priori knowledge before diving into the data and computationally expensive process of finding the most effective flood mitigation solutions.
Blau-grüne Infrastruktur: Eine Möglichkeit zur Förderung der biologischen Vielfalt in vom Menschen geprägten Landschaften?
Donati, Giulia F.A.; Bolliger, Janine; Psomas, Achilleas; et al. (2021)
Inside: Nature + Paysage, Natur + Landschaft
Calibration and sensitivity analysis of a novel water flow and pollution model for future city planning: Future Urban Stormwater Simulation (FUSS)
Prodanovic, Veljko; Jamali, Behzad; Kuller, Martijn; et al. (2022)
Water Science & Technology
Planning for future urban development and water infrastructure is uncertain due to changing human activities and climate. To quantify these changes, we need adaptable and fast models that can reliably explore scenarios without requiring extensive data and inputs. While such models have been recently considered for urban development, they are lacking for stormwater pollution assessment. This work proposes a novel Future Urban Stormwater Simulation (FUSS) model, utilizing previously developed urban planning algorithm (UrbanBEATS) to dynamically assess pollution changes in urban catchments. By using minimal input data and adding stochastic point-source pollution to the build-up/wash-off approach, this study highlights calibration and sensitivity analysis of flow and pollution modules, across the range of common stormwater pollutants. The results highlight excellent fit to measured values in a continuous rainfall simulation for the flow model, with one significant calibration parameter. The pollution model was more variable, with TSS, TP and Pb showing high model efficiency, while TN was predicted well only across event-based assessment. The work further explores the framework for the model application in future pollution assessment, and points to the future work aiming to developing land-use dependent model parameter sets, to achieve flexibility for model application across varied urban catchments.

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Peter Marcus Bach

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