Contextualizing and Communicating the Co-benefits Associated with Green Stormwater Infrastructure
Abstract
Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) has risen in popularity because of its ability to disconnect storm flows from the sewershed, improve water quality, and provide ancillary benefits to the community. Stormwater is regulated using water quality and quantity metrics which are relatively easy to measure and model. However, the ancillary social, ecological, and environmental benefits of GSI used to manage urban runoff are difficult to attribute and measure, especially at the national scale. Using vegetation indices from remote sensing and public perception surveys, we have created a framework for assessing potential co-benefits in a location-specific context. A case study in Philadelphia, PA, which has a robust GSI program, found city-wide loss of vegetation. This trend may be due to stormwater practitioners focusing more on volumetric goals than vegetated goals, resulting in the installation of more non-vegetated GSI than vegetated GSI. When residents of Philadelphia were asked about their preference for green and grey infrastructure, they showed a slight preference for grey infrastructure in the context of handling storms in their neighborhood. While vegetation trends and public preferences in Philadelphia may be aligning, the suite of co-benefits accruing is being limited. To help practitioners create more targeted GSI interventions at a neighborhood scale, high-resolution vegetation monitoring coupled with community preference for specific co-benefits is used to identify areas where hydrologically and economically optimized stormwater infrastructure should be installed. In addition, guidance is developed for specific co-benefits so that interventions can be impactful on the systems-level. This research will help shift the paradigm from water quality and quantity based compliance metrics to the inclusion of co-benefits into the planning and assessment processes. Results from this research will be incorporated into the integrated decision support tool (i-DST), a national stormwater planning tool that also includes infrastructure optimization, life cycle costs, and life cycle analysis.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.H11A..07S
- Keywords:
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- 0412 Biogeochemical kinetics and reaction modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1871 Surface water quality;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGY