Developing a Framework for Stormwater Green Infrastructure Resilience

Urban green infrastructures (GI) are becoming increasingly important as a part of the stormwater management systems in the urban area. To assess the urban GI resilience, multidisciplinary studies are required considering the connections between sociological and ecological factors. Socio-ecological analysis of these systems can bring the connection that exists between human and nature, which is the basics of resilience thinking. Until recently, studies have focused more on biophysical dimensions of urban green infrastructure rather than sociological and institutional dimensions. Evaluating how resilient urban stormwater GIs are in terms of providing ecosystem services, is missing in the literature. In this research, we provided an assessment tool for decision makers and city managers to evaluate the resilience of GIs in the urban area from a new perspective. To do this, we have identified different types of stormwater GIs, classified the primary and secondary services that we can get out of them, and defined resilience with respect to providing those services. Furthermore, we introduced barriers that may cause such GIs not to function well, which causes them to lose resiliency. We have categorized those failures into six components including environmental, system design and planning, operational and maintenance, policy plans and strategies, community and society, and financial. Then we introduced evaluation criteria and assess and rank the systems under each category. Developing such assessment tools will help the decision makers and stakeholders to (1) determine how resilient a GI is (2) identify in which categories the resilience is low and (3) help to improve the resilience of GI. This conceptual framework that comprise social elements will provide more efficient solutions than those that disregard humans in solving environmental issues. The outcome of this framework will elucidate resilience assessment in urban GI and can be used by managers to allocate strategies to increase the resilience of such systems.