In recent decades, sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) are more often seen as an addition to, or a replacement of, traditional piped urban drainage (UD) systems. Unfortunately, failures in SUDS still occur regularly, resulting in malfunctioning systems, water nuisance and high costs. To learn from past experiences and to ensure that SUDS in the future can function as a credible alternative to piped UD systems, these failures should be identified, and the underlying reasons more thoroughly understood. Therefore, the research objective of this study was to create a better understanding of technical failures in SUDS and identify their root causes. In creating this understanding, cases of technical failures in SUDS were collected and interviews were conducted to reveal information about their root causes. The observations showed that the implementation of SUDS in the urban environment present new interfaces between systems, disciplines and responsibilities. These interfaces between SUDS and subsystems were shown to be prominent failure locations. The interviews revealed that designers, constructors and operators often lack knowledge about these interactions and their impact on the performance of SUDS. Combining the results of technical failures and the underlying root causes showed that throughout the whole development process of SUDS (i.e. design phase, construction phase and user/maintenance phase) technical failures arise. In minimizing these technical failures, every project phase should focus on certain root causes behind technical failures. The classification of the 13 identified root causes revealed that root causes stem from uncertainties in technical, social and institutional systems and are located both within (internal) and between systems (interface). Previous research focused mainly on barriers in the socio-institutional system, this research however showed that we should just as much focus on the technical system. Moreover, previous research primary focused on the performance of SUDS in their context, this study revealed that interfaces between SUDS and other urban subsystems are critical and deserve extra attention in future projects. Further research is required to systematically keep record of the problems and failures occurring in SUDS.

The main focus of this project is to gain insight into feasible strategies for sustainable water supply in a community inhabited by indigenous people. This was done by an intervention study in a small village called El Progreso in the province of Colon, on the Caribbean coast of Panama. The project aims to provide safe drinking water to the 80 members of the Embera tribe, living in El Progreso. This is done by constructing rainwater harvesting tanks where rainwater will be collected from roofs of houses and school buildings and stored within the tanks. We want to investigate the impact of this system, which supplies safe drinking water on a daily basis, on the community. The construction of the storage tanks (ferrocement) will stimulate and create local entrepreneurship. In these ways we will take our first step towards a sustainable local enterprise and sustainable employment. This can ultimately result in a long-term development in the El Progreso area. The project consists of 3 study topics: the physical construction of the rainwater harvesting tanks and the project control and quality that comes with this, evaluating the quality and quantity of available water sources in the area of rainwater and rainwater and the possible changes in the community due to this project (both the influence of the newly constructed tanks on daily life as well as the presence of aid in the community and social impacts that comes along with this). The project resulted in the construction of 11 tanks, improved job opportunities for several community members, improved trust in aid organizations as well as connecting the community to a national aid network for future projects.