Water Management Lessons from Nature for Applications to Buildings

Water management and regulation in buildings have been facing real challenges with the increasing environmental awareness during the last decades. Current concerns of shortage in water resources increase the demands to enhance water management strategies. In this respect, buildings should be able to gain, conserve, transport, and lose water adequately. Efficient water management solutions can be extracted from strategies found in nature. Here, we classify a basic array of strategies for water management; discuss morphological features and active means; and list corresponding examples from nature, to facilitate the search for and the selection of strategies from the large database of nature, and inspire new design solutions.