Under the context of global warming and rapid urbanization, cities worldwide are increasingly facing problems of environmental pollution and ecosystem degradation, one of the grand challenges in achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Such challenges call for new frameworks and approaches for improved urban ecosystem management. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has now been increasingly recognized as an effective means to mitigate ecological risks, strengthen city resilience and advance urban sustainability. Here, we systematically reviewed the background and development of NbS, in order to provide insights into its critical content and criteria guidelines. Taking urban waterlogging, a problem faced by many cities worldwide as an example, we first reviewed the applications of NbS on urban waterlogging mitigation, from technical tools at micro level, to measurement methods and evaluation models at macro level. Our study shows that NbS has unique advantages of addressing urban environmental problems, compared with traditional grey facilities in cities. We highlight the significance of NbS in stormwater management via restoration of natural water body, utilization of rainwater and optimization of urban landscape. We further compared NbS with other similar solutions related to stormwater management to summarize existing implementation cases and integrate various perspectives. Finally, we discussed the potentials of applying NbS on climate adaptation to enhance urban resilience, as well as the challenges such as unmatured theoretical concept of NbS, gaps from theory to practice, weakness in local-based knowledge for applications, and lack of well-trained practitioners.