Low Impact Development (LID) Practices: A Review on Recent Developments, Challenges and Prospects

Low impact development (LID) practices are able to mitigate the detrimental effects of urbanization and climate change due to their salient design features. LID can restore the hydrology of urban areas to the pre-development functions by using distributed stormwater control and natural hydrological features. LID can help to achieve the goal of sustainable development as it promotes effective urban stormwater management. This review covers a comprehensive list of LID practices, namely bioretention cell, green roof, infiltration trench, permeable pavement, rain barrel or cistern, rooftop disconnection and vegetative swale. For each type of the LID, the recent advances covering the aspects of principles, design, performance, advantages and disadvantages and costs are systematically reviewed. Additionally, although LID has been quite broadly applied and demonstrated success in urban stormwater management in many countries, there are still some main challenges during the implementation such as clogging and water quality. Meanwhile, this review also highlights the great opportunities for further developments for LID practices to realize their wider practical application. Finally, future research directions are provided in order to give critical insights into potential future works to advance this field of research.