On February 1, the World Health Organization Bulletin published the article "Sponge Cities for a Healthier Humanity". The article points out that addressing issues related to climate change, flooding, sanitation and health requires nature-based solutions to improve the resilience of urban environments and reduce the incidence of public health events. Urban designers around the world are working to build a healthier, safer, and more sustainable world using green infrastructure approaches such as sponge cities.

In August 2022, Pakistan experienced its worst flooding in nearly a decade, killing more than 1,300 people, injuring thousands, displacing hundreds of thousands of people due to the floods, and destroying more than one million houses and buildings in the floods.

Those living in urban floodplains without formal shelter, adequate water and access to sanitation systems and services are the greatest victims of flooding and face significant health risks. Approximately 1.7 billion people worldwide, or 38% of the total urban population, currently lack access to safe sanitation systems.

In the face of increasingly frequent extreme flooding, governments around the world are actively seeking solutions that can enhance the rainfall and water storage capacity of their infrastructure.

Most cities around the world face material and structural constraints in their construction. Impermeable materials (such as concrete and asphalt) and non-resilient structures (such as dams and piped facilities) are difficult to adapt to extreme rainfall events and can only channel or collect rainwater to a limited extent; such facilities are also highly susceptible to collapse due to their lack of resilience. Our cities are filled with such materials and are therefore repeatedly hit hard by flood events, as was the case with the July 2012 Beijing rainstorm - which claimed 79 lives.