Green stormwater infrastructure: A critical review of the barriers and solutions to widespread implementation

Heidari, Bardia; Randle, Sayd; Minchillo, Dean; Jaber, Fouad

doi:10.1002/wat2.1625

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 99 publications

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“…NbS has commonly been considered in urban environments to address urban flooding, with examples of NbS including green roofs (Davis & Naumann, 2017; Zölch et al, 2017), and pervious/permeable pavements (Fini et al, 2017; Santhanam & Majumdar, 2020). Deely et al (2020), Dhakal and Chevalier (2017) and Heidari et al (2023) provide reviews of NbS in urban environments. However, NbS are also relevant to river flood management—which is the key focus of this paper—where NbS methods include mangroves (Debrot et al, 2022; Morris et al, 2018), salt marshes (Baptist et al, 2021; Morris et al, 2018), floodplain restoration (Jakubínský et al, 2021; Perosa et al, 2021), and dry detention ponds (Brasil et al, 2021; Langergraber et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over the last few years, research on NbS has exponentially increased with the number of papers in Web of Science increasing from three in 2015 to over 250 in 2020 (Data sourced on April 7, 2021) (Albert et al, 2021). However, most of the available literature is on NbS for urban areas (e.g., (Heidari et al, 2023; Kabisch et al, 2016), with implementation or investigation of NbS for river floods less common (Ruangpan et al, 2020). This is surprising considering the number of settlements that occur near these rivers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Enhancing river floodplain management with nature‐based solutions: Overcoming barriers and harnessing enablers

Christopher,

Vachette,

Horne

et al. 2024

WIREs Water

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Floodplains are regularly inundated areas of land that provide ecosystem benefits for the entire catchment area, along with numerous benefits for communities making them ideal for human settlement. The management of floodplains involves an ongoing dilemma; how best to balance the need to protect urban settlements from significant flood events with the benefits that inundation brings to the environmental and cultural values of the floodplain. These flood events have been traditionally addressed using technical flood protection measures. However, nature‐based solutions (NbS), provide a potential alternative approach. In this research, we analyze 29 global case studies centered on river floodplain management to investigate the barriers and enablers that affect the implementation of NbS, including floodplain restoration, mangroves, riparian forest restoration, wetland green infrastructure, among other strategies. The aim of this paper is to gain insights into improving floodplain management through the assessment of barriers and enablers evident in these case studies. The barriers and enablers were divided into six categories: social, technical, financial, political, institutional and economic and further into several sub‐divided categories. Social and technical categories were the most commonly described barriers and enablers closely followed by the institutional category. The discussion is centered around four topics: understanding community and decision‐maker risk perceptions, increased focus on stakeholders, managing multiple conflicting objectives, and consideration of multiple spatial scales. Further research on the uptake of NbS needs to focus on addressing risk communication and modeling, managing trade‐offs, and demonstration of delayed benefits.This article is categorized under: Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing river floodplain management with nature‐based solutions: Overcoming barriers and harnessing enablers

Christopher,

Vachette,

Horne

et al. 2024

WIREs Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Rapid urbanization, aging infrastructure, and climate change impacts have put a stress on existing the stormwater drainage systems and one commonly used solution to solve these challenges is green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) [1]. GSI represents an innovative approach to stormwater management with three primary functions: mitigating stormwater runoff, controlling floods, and improving water quality [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plant Density and Health Evaluation in Green Stormwater Infrastructure Using Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle-Based Imagery

Xue,

Qian,

Kang

et al. 2024

Applied Sciences

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Over the past few decades, there has been a notable surge in interest in green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). This trend is a result of the need to effectively address issues related to runoff, pollution, and the adverse effects of urbanization and impervious surfaces on waterways. Concurrently, umanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained prominence across applications, including photogrammetry, military applications, precision farming, agricultural land, forestry, environmental surveillance, remote-sensing, and infrastructure maintenance. Despite the widespread use of GSI and UAV technologies, there remains a glaring gap in research focused on the evaluation and maintenance of the GSIs using UAV-based imagery. This study aimed to develop an integrated framework to evaluate plant density and health within GSIs using UAV-based imagery. This integrated framework incorporated the UAV (commonly known as a drone), WebOpenDroneMap (WebDOM), ArcMap, PyCharm, and the Canopeo application. The UAV-based images of GSI components, encompassing trees, grass, soil, and unhealthy trees, as well as entire GSIs (e.g., bioretention and green roofs) within the Morgan State University (MSU) campus were collected, processed, and analyzed using this integrated framework. Results indicated that the framework yielded highly accurate predictions of plant density with a high R2 value of 95.8% and lower estimation errors of between 3.9% and 9.7%. Plant density was observed to vary between 63.63% and 75.30% in the GSIs at the MSU campus, potentially attributable to the different types of GSI, varying facility ages, and inadequate maintenance. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maps and scales of two GSIs were also generated to evaluate plant health. The NDVI and plant density results can be used to suggest where new plants can be added and to provide proper maintenance to achieve proper functions within the GSIs. This study provides a framework for evaluating plant performance within the GSIs using the collected UAV-based imagery.

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“…

To combat the hydrological consequences of more-widespread urbanization, resulting from rising populations globally and within cities, many urban centers have adopted green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) systems as a sustainable, nature-based approach to stormwater management (Ebrahimian & Wadzuk, 2022;Heidari et al, 2022). This is a departure from the traditional approach to stormwater management, referred to as "gray" stormwater infrastructure, which relied on engineered infrastructure to move and store stormwater (Johns, 2019), such as sewer pipes and large-scale, centralized detention systems.

…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Complete Water Balance of a Rain Garden

McGauley,

Amur,

Shakya

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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A bioinfiltration rain garden was retrofitted from an existing traffic island at Villanova University in 2001. It has been monitored continuously since 2003 at a 5‐min timeseries resolution and with instrumentation that would enable a water balance calculation. This 20‐year data set allows for an in‐depth analysis of the hydrologic pathways and management in the rain garden. Using physical equations and modeled data (based on real‐time measurements), a balance of all influent, stored, and effluent water within the rain garden was constructed. Analysis shows the rain garden captures 73.5% of runoff, resulting in a post‐implementation management of 86.2% of all rainfall in its watershed. In comparison to the hydrology of other land covers, implementing the rain garden resulted in the management of 37.6% more rainfall than pre‐implementation, producing a hydrological signature similar to that of cultivated land or low development levels (e.g., 30% impervious). Additionally, with the long data record, several statistical techniques were applied to determine the amount of monitoring needed for a certain level of precision in system performance assessment. For 5% uncertainty, approximately 3 years of continuous data is needed to assess performance. This analysis not only facilitates understanding the function of rain garden systems, but also provides conclusions and methodology for understanding the uncertainty associated with the extent of monitoring performed on these green stormwater infrastructure systems. These findings provide practical knowledge as monitoring of stormwater management infrastructures is becoming a more standard part of their operation.

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Green stormwater infrastructure: A critical review of the barriers and solutions to widespread implementation

Cited by 8 publications

References 99 publications

Enhancing river floodplain management with nature‐based solutions: Overcoming barriers and harnessing enablers

Enhancing river floodplain management with nature‐based solutions: Overcoming barriers and harnessing enablers

Plant Density and Health Evaluation in Green Stormwater Infrastructure Using Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle-Based Imagery

A Complete Water Balance of a Rain Garden

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