Floods are among the most common natural hazards in Florida. They are threatening the safety and economic welfare of Floridians. Every year Florida spends millions of dollar to mitigate direct flood damages. Amongst the effective solutions to these flood damages is the control of urban drainage in school buildings and nearby grounds to conserve and preserve natural resources and to promote sustainable thinking.
This paper discusses how public schools in Florida can benefit from sustainable techniques by applying the sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS) to school designs. The article also illustrates how Florida can use school sites as double functions to provide an active educational environment and to manage storm water runoff at the same time. Construction costs estimation for sustainable techniques is calculated based on data available for the year 2011 and compared with the conventional construction methods for schools.
The result indicates a high initial cost that can easily be offset by considering the cost of conventional drainage structure, conserved storm water, flooding impact, storm water sewage disposal, and other measures.
