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Assessment of green infrastructure performance through an urban resilience lens
Citation:
Fu, X., M. Hopton, AND X. Wang. Assessment of green infrastructure performance through an urban resilience lens. JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 289:125146, (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125146
Impact/Purpose:
The research addresses issues related to the Clean Water Act and proposes a planning support system to assist stakeholders and decision makers to better manage their environmental systems while managing stormwater and quantifying resilience. Specifically, this paper introduces a methodology to assess resilience and is applicable to local, state, regional, tribal, and federal partners.
Description:
Green infrastructure (GI) is widely recognized for reducing risk of flooding, improving water quality, and harvesting stormwater for potential future use. GI can be an important part of a strategy used in urban planning to enhance sustainable development and urban resilience. However, existing literature lacks a comprehensive assessment framework to evaluate GI performance in terms of promoting ecosystem functions and services for social-ecological system resilience. We propose a scenario-based planning support system to assess the capacity of urban resilience by using a robust indicator set consisting of quantitative and qualitative measurements. Green Infrastructure in Urban Resilience Planning Support System (GIUR-PSS) supports decision-making for GI planning through scenario comparisons with the urban resilience capacity index. To demonstrate GIUR-PSS, we developed five scenarios for the Congress Run sub-watershed (Mill Creek watershed, Ohio, USA) to test common types of GI (rain barrels, rain gardens, detention basins, porous pavement, and open space). Results show the open space scenario achieves the overall highest performance (GI Urban Resilience Index = 4.27/5). To implement the open space scenario in our urban demonstration site, suitable vacant lots could be converted to greenspace (e.g., forest, detention basins, and low-impact recreation areas). GIUR-PSS is easy to replicate, customize, and apply to cities of different sizes to assess environmental, economic, and social benefits provided by different types of GI installations.
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DOI: Assessment of green infrastructure performance through an urban resilience lens
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