An Integrated Framework of Green Stormwater Infrastructure Planning—A Review

Abstract

Conventional stormwater management infrastructures show low levels of sustainability owing to the consistent impact of urbanization and climate change, and the green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) has been identified as a more sustainable alternative approach. According to a systematic review, the articles and papers concerning GSI planning are fragmented, especially those discussing the planning steps; thus, an integrated framework of GSI planning is developed here to guide forthcoming planning. In the facility aspect, the research status and prospects of four critical planning steps (i.e., objective formulation, type/scenario evaluation, quantity/scale determination, and site selection) are discussed, and a method of quantifying the relationship between GSI and ecosystem services is given. In the ecosystem aspect, ecosystem resilience promotion is regarded as an approach to guarantee the interaction between hydrological processes and ecological processes, which maintains the sustainable provision of ecosystem services produced by GSI in diverse disturbances. Proposals for future GSI planning research are put forward as comprehensive consideration of the two abovementioned aspects to harvest ecosystem services from GSI directly and to promote the anti-disturbance ability of the ecosystem to guarantee the stable provision of ecosystem services indirectly, which are conducive to the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of GSI.

Urban Trees and Hydrological Ecosystem Service: A Novel Approach to Analyzing the Relationship Between Landscape Structure and Runoff Reduction

“…Urban trees are recommended as an effective and complementary measure to alleviate the problem of urban stormwater runoff, improving urban sustainability (Mullaney et al 2015 ; US EPA 2017 ; Lu and Wang 2021 ). To properly understand and utilize the capacity of urban trees for runoff mitigation, it is vital to obtain precise and reliable estimates of RRES.…”

“…Traditional stormwater management approaches (gray infrastructure) are often inadequate and unsustainable to mitigate the current and future impacts and are also expensive to construct and maintain (US EPA 2017 ; Lu and Wang 2021 ). This has led to a demand for alternative and complementary cost-effective and sustainable approaches, primarily involving urban green infrastructure (UGI) (Wang et al 2008 ; Carlyle-Moses et al 2020 ; Hamel and Tan 2022 ).…”

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Inputs for Planning the Implementation of Nature-based Solutions in Urban Contexts

“…Regarding NbS for stormwater management, research is currently transitioning from valuing hydrological and hydraulic benefits to integrating more ecosystem services. However, explicitly linking ecosystem services to these NbS types can create a complex issue arising with the formulation of objectives (Lu and Wang, 2021), which should embody the multiple advantages and requirements of the NbS. Nevertheless, the often ambiguous objectives impede NbS adoption by discouraging investor and stakeholder incorporation (ibid.).…”

“…One prevalent approach to NbS planning is devising urban indices, mostly following GIS-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologies. This technique systemically prioritizes areas and place systems, in accordance with predefined goals and site constrictions (Lu and Wang, 2021), and combines qualitative and quantitative information (Langemeyer et al, 2020). GIS-MCDA studies for NbS implementation usually include socio-ecological (Heckert and Rosan, 2016;Meerow and Newell, 2017;Pacetti et al, 2022) and hydrological or hydraulic (Pacetti et al, 2022) factors and, in some cases, relate explicitly to ecosystem services (Chang et al, 2021;Kuller et al, 2019;Langemeyer et al, 2020;Lourdes et al, 2022;Venter et al, 2021).…”

Supply–Demand Evaluation of Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) Based on the Model of Coupling Coordination

“…Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI), as an innovative stormwater management approach and nature-based solution, has been highly recommended for reducing stormwater runoff, improving water quality, and providing ecosystem sustainability [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. The main purpose of GSI is to reduce the impact of development on water-related problems through the use of GSI practices such as bioretention, green roofs, grass swales, and permeable pavements that infiltrate, evaporate, and use stormwater on site where it falls [ 16 ].…”