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Transdisciplinary assessment of community capacity for a Green Infrastructure Typology
Citation:
Twichell, J., M. ten Brink, R. Furey, AND I. Heilke. Transdisciplinary assessment of community capacity for a Green Infrastructure Typology. Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation (CERF) 24th Biennial Conference, Providence, RI, November 05 - 09, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Making decisions to increase communities’ use of GI in stormwater and natural resources management requires guidance for understanding the interrelationships between enviro-socioeconomic factors, communities’ capacity to take action, and organizational processes. The EPA Green Infrastructure Typology is a comprehensive, transdisciplinary assessment tool designed to be a simple mechanism by which communities can identify and use indicators to assess their system context and progress toward adoption of GI. The tool enables communities to identify gaps, barriers, drivers of change, and community needs in order to guide communities through more informed GI decision making.
Description:
Widespread use of green infrastructure (GI) in estuarine and coastal management has potential to both mitigate the negative effects of stormwater runoff and generate co-benefits from ecosystem goods and services. However, communities vary widely in their ability to fund, implement, and maintain GI. Decisions about how best to address community needs and effectively implement GI require guidance for interpreting interrelationships in condition, drivers of change, capacity to take action, and organizational processes. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) GI Typology was developed as a multi-scale assessment tool designed to fill this need for guidance. The typology assembles indicators within a classification framework, enabling assessment in three central domains (1) environmental context, (2) socioeconomic context, and (3) institutional progress in GI implementation. Indicators within each domain contribute to identifying barriers to GI implementation as well as community needs and drivers. The assessment tool has two complementary uses. It evaluates communities’ enviro-socioeconomic context to inform GI decision-making and planning using select indicators from national and regional scale geospatial datasets. In addition, the typology provides a means of measuring institutional progress in GI implementation through self-evaluation. The typology makes possible a comprehensive, highly transdisciplinary assessment that will enable communities to focus efforts on identifying gaps, increasing capacity, and expanding the use of GI in coastal and estuarine management.