The 12th International Conference on Water Resource and Environment (WRE 2026)

Abstract: Korean cities must now manage flooding, drought, pollution and urban heat at once, yet conventional grey drainage addresses only one of these. Non-point sources contribute 22.4% of the pollutant load entering the four major rivers, and impervious surfaces cover more than half of non-forested land, reaching 54.4% in Seoul. This keynote reviews twenty years of Korean experience with Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Low Impact Development (LID), organised around three questions.
First, how did Korea scale NbS from a single facility to national law? The talk traces a stepwise pathway from university test beds and national non-point source pilots, through green infrastructure at public offices and the Zero-Runoff Demonstration Projects in Cheongju Ochang and Jeonju Seogok, to five Water Cycle Leading Cities and, finally, the Framework Act on Water Management (2018) and the Water Cycle Promotion and Support Act (2023).
Second, what does the monitoring evidence show? Individual LID facilities typically removed 80–98% of pollutants, while district-scale runoff and pollutant loads fell by about 20% with only 14% of the area treated. Co-benefits included air-temperature reductions of 1.3–1.5 °C, 890–1,254 tCO₂-eq of annual greenhouse gas reduction and groundwater recharge, yielding benefit–cost ratios of up to 2.5.
Third, do NbS hold up under a changing climate? The pilots were designed for a stationary climate, but five years of IoT monitoring (2021–2025) captured 32 extreme rainfall events and 20 heatwaves. A new hydro-thermal resilience index shows that storage capacity and media pore structure govern how facilities resist and recover from compound extremes.
The talk closes with policy pathways linking this evidence to design standards, facility certification, climate adaptation planning and carbon-sink accounting, and with three lessons: scale in steps and monitor every step, count more than water quality, and write resilience into the next design standard.

Biography: Prof. Leehyung Kim received his Bachelor's degree (1994) and Master's degree (1996) from Korea University, and was received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from UCLA, USA (2002). He has been a professor at Kongju National University in Korea since 2003, and currently serves as President of the Korean Wetlands Society, a member of the IWA DPSG Committee, and Chair of the Executive Committee for UNESCO-iWSSM. His research laboratory focuses on water environment and environmental ecological engineering within the broader field of environmental engineering. The primary research areas include improving water quality through nonpoint source pollution management and developing technologies based on Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as Low Impact Development (LID) and Green Infrastructure. His lab is conducting research to address various environmental issues—such as algal blooms, soil erosion, nonpoint source pollution, urban heat island effects, and urban flooding—caused by land use changes and climate change in watersheds, by establishing sustainable water circulation systems. In addition, the lab is actively developing carbon absorption and storage technologies using nature-based solutions such as constructed wetlands, ecological detention basins, and rain gardens. He has published approximately 250 academic papers in journals and holds 31 patents.