The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, coupled with rapid urbanization, are placing unprecedented pressure on urban environments. The Three-Point Sponge Policy Approach (3PSPa) integrates the Three-Point Approach (3PA) with Sponge City principles to enhance urban flood resilience through design-driven, adaptive, and multifunctional solutions. This paper applies the 3PSPa framework to Zhengzhou, China, which experienced devastating flooding in 2021, to assess its current flood resilience measures and explore pathways for improvement. Two contrasting urban districts in Zhengzhou were analysed: B1, a newly developed, low-density district offering high potential for implementing large-scale blue-green-grey infrastructure (BGGI); and B2, a dense, older district where interventions are limited, typically emerging incrementally through targeted retrofitting associated with urban renewal activities. By applying the 3PSPa’s five-step design process, this study identifies resilience gaps and proposes tailored interventions, balancing short-term, localized strategies with long-term, catchment-wide transformations. It emphasizes the importance of shifting from a conveyance-based water management approach to a diversified strategy that integrates infrastructure with natural hydrological processes.

Urban water management is confronted with more frequent, more extreme weather events. This paper introduces the Three-Points Approach (3PA) into Sponge City concept, to create a novel framework aimed at guiding water management interventions across local, urban, regional, and river basin scales. The 3PA integrates three domains—Day-to-day, Design, and Extreme —offering a nuanced strategy for flood and drought risk mitigation, also for extreme events. Notably, the 3PA emphasizes the fusion of blue-green infrastructure (BGI) with conventional gray approaches to enhance both multifunctionality and resilience in extreme weather conditions. The study identifies critical issues of implementing this Three-Points Sponge Policy (3PSP) approach, including spatial and temporal scales, transitioning from gray to blue-green infrastructure, asset management, data handling, and effective communication. Interventions spanning various spatial scales and addressing flood protection, drought resilience, and water quality are explored in a first and indicative application in Zhengzhou. The case study distills key design principles, highlighting the imperative of never shifting problems, embracing ecosystem-based adaptation, seeking synergy between interventions, and incorporating adaptability into designs. The 3PSP approach emerges as a holistic framework that considers both risks and benefits, contributing valuable insights to the discourse on integrating urban and river basin water management, improving our ways of dealing with extreme weather events while maximizing the day-to-day benefits of our interventions.

To achieve inclusive and sustainable urban development, the introduction of water related Nature Based Solutions (NBS) have proven to be eff ective in specific urban contexts. Different sources point out their contribution to various SDG’s in Europe, Australia and the United States, all of which are regions with high GDP levels with strong institutional contexts. However, in regions that are underdeveloped, have weak institutional contexts, high social and economic inequality and are situated in more vulnerable or extreme landscapes, the so called ‘vulnerable geographies’, the experience with Nature Based Solutions is less extensive (PBL, 2018). This report presents the results of a literature review that aims at providing a first (broad) exploration of NBS in contexts outside the regions mentioned above.