Insights on the Economics of Green Infrastructure: A Case Study Approach

Urban drainage has developed from an engineering discipline concerned principally with public health and safety outcomes, into a multi-faceted vision linking drainage with environmental and wider social and economic imperatives to deliver multi-functional outcomes. UK attention is too often focused on surface water as a problem despite international progress and initiatives showing that an opportunity-centred approach needs to be taken. Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS/SUDS) as part of an integrated approach to water management, cost-effectively provide many benefits beyond management of water quality and quantity. New tools are available that can provide the means to design SuDS for maximum value to society and this requires greater collaboration across disciplines to seize all of the opportunities available. Tools and a roadmap for this are introduced, including guidance, design objectives and criteria for maximising benefits. These new supporting tools and guidance can help provide the business case for using SuDS.

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“…Hair et al, 2014). SuDS can also support and enhance biodiversity (Defra, 2011) and add to the stock of natural capital.…”

Section: The Present: From Problems To Opportunitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

UK sustainable drainage systems: past, present and future

Ashley

Walker

D’Arcy³

et al. 2015

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Civil Engin

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“…Due to the inherent need for cross-sectoral cooperation in designing, implementing and maintaining SUDS, efforts could also be placed on involving local communities in decision-making processes, instead of only presenting these actors with end results. This is underlined by Hair et al (2014) and Ashley et al (2013), who suggest to encourage stakeholder involvement and education at all levels of decision-making processes to improve transparency and foster trust and therewith increase acceptance and engagement by addressing citizen, business and political concerns (see Box 8.2). In this context, also employing collaborative governance approaches as suggested by to foster collaboration between decision makers and citizens, businesses and civil society connecting demands for action with responsible actors or partnerships for action could be a promising instrument to reduce barriers for adopting and implementing SUDS.…”

Section: Addressing Silos and Informational Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additional indirect consequences are an insufficient discharge of excess water to the regional water system, and an increase of pollutants in the water caused by run-off (e.g., oil, organic matter and toxic metals), leading to increases in algal blooms, harm to wildlife and reductions in amenity value (Sharma 2008). Furthermore, managing storm water runoff through grey infrastructure approaches typically entails high construction, maintenance, and repair costs (Hair et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas

Kabisch¹,

Korn²,

Stadler³

et al. 2017

Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions

408

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This book series Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions is intended to explore the different dynamics, challenges, and breakthroughs in accelerating sustainability transitions in urban areas across the globe. We expect to find as much different and diverse stories, visions, experiments, and creative actors as there are cities: from metropolises to country towns, from inner city districts to suburbs, from developed to developing, from monocultural to diverse, and from hierarchical to egalitarian. But we also expect to find patterns in processes and dynamics of transitions across this diversity. Transition dynamics include locked-in regimes that are challenged by changing contexts, ecological stress and societal pressure for change as well as experiments and innovations in niches driven by entrepreneurial networks, and creative communities and proactive administrators. But also included are resistance by vested interests and sunken costs, uncertainties about the future amongst urban populations, political instabilities, and the erosion of social services and systems of provision. And finally there are the forming of transformative arenas, the development of coalitions for change across different actor groups, the diffusion and adoption of new practices, and exponential growth of sustainable technologies. For this series we seek this middle ground: between urban and transition perspectives, between conceptual and empirical, and between structural and practical. We aim to develop this series to offer scholars state-of-the-art theoretical developments applied to the context of cities. Equally important is that we offer urban planners, professionals, and practitioners interested or engaged in strategic interventions to accelerate and guide urban sustainability transition frameworks for understanding and dealing with on-going developments, methods, and instruments. This book series will lead to new insights into how cities address the sustainability challenges they face by not returning to old patterns but by searching for new and innovative methods and instruments that are based on shared principles of a transitions approach. Based on concrete experiences, state-of-the-art research, and ongoing practices, the series provides rich insights, concrete and inspiring cases as well as practical methods, tools, theories, and recommendations. The book series, informed by transition thinking as it was developed in the last decade in Europe, aims to describe, analyse, and support the quest of cities around the globe to accelerate and stimulate such a transition to sustainability.

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“…This is underlined by Hair et al (2014) and Ashley et al (2013), who suggest to encourage stakeholder involvement and education at all levels of decision-making processes to improve transparency and foster trust and therewith increase acceptance and engagement by addressing citizen, business and political concerns (see Box 8.2). In this context, also employing collaborative governance approaches as suggested by Kabisch et al (2016) to foster collaboration between decision makers and citizens, businesses and civil society connecting demands for action with responsible actors or partnerships for action could be a promising instrument to reduce barriers for adopting and implementing SUDS.…”

Section: Addressing Silos and Informational Gapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the Case for Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems as a Nature-Based Solution to Urban Flooding

Davis

Naumann

2017

Theory and Practice of Urban Sustainability Transitions

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European cities continue to experience a steady increase in the intensity and frequency of floods, largely due to high urban densities and resultant soil sealing. In the last decade, flooding as a natural hazard has produced the highest economic losses in Europe and storm water management has become a serious urban challenge.The traditional solution to cope with excess rainwater in western cities has been piped drainage systems. These are mainly single-objective oriented designs that often no longer have the capacity to keep pace with on-going urbanisation and the impacts of climate change, and frequently involve high construction, maintenance, and repair costs. While such approaches have certainly reduced the damages incurred from flooding events during the past two centuries and are arguably still necessary for extreme flood events in the future, alternative approaches that accomplish these aims and offer additional benefits are progressively being pursued. Given these conditions, one increasingly utilised solution for managing flood risk by dealing with water at the source is sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS). Other terms which also aim to minimise potential impacts on the neighbouring environment, people and development include inter alia BMP (Best Management Practices); LID (Low Impact Development); WSUD (Water Sensitive Urban Design) (see: Fletcher et al., Urban Water J 12 (7):525-542, 2015 for a complete taxonomy).SUDS as a promising nature-based solution are the focus of this chapter, utilizing a range of case studies and evidence from across Europe to underline the arguments presented. Besides reducing the negative effects of urban flooding and interlinked water pollution, the many supplementary benefits and potential cost-effectiveness of SUDS as compared to grey infrastructure solutions are also presented. In addition to highlighting relative advantages, the chapter also outlines current challenges facing a wider uptake of SUDS and presents approaches to help overcome existing social and political barriers.The promise of ongoing research, targeted collaboration and partnerships and an ever-growing evidence base on the effectiveness and associated costs and benefits of SUDS serve as strong tools to improve the confidence and competence associated

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Insights on the Economics of Green Infrastructure: A Case Study Approach

Cited by 6 publications

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UK sustainable drainage systems: past, present and future

UK sustainable drainage systems: past, present and future

Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas

Making the Case for Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems as a Nature-Based Solution to Urban Flooding

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