Abstract
Sustainable drainage systems and ‘blue–green’ infrastructure provide a range of environmental, economic and social benefits in addition to managing water quantity and quality. Recognition of the multi-functionality of these systems and their multiple benefits could lead to joint efforts to deliver infrastructure that meets the strategic objectives of both public and private organisations. This paper reports on the evaluation of the multiple benefits of the Killingworth and Longbenton surface water management scheme, a partnership project in north-east England jointly funded by Northumbrian Water, the Environment Agency and North Tyneside Council. Using complementary assessment tools, the evaluation quantified and monetised six key benefits, assessed two qualitative benefits, illustrated the spatial distribution of five non-flood benefits and highlighted locations with the greatest opportunity for multi-beneficial intervention. It was found that the scheme generates significant flood damage reduction benefits, improves water quality, habitat size, carbon dioxide sequestration and amenity, and reduces noise pollution. Use of the tools for multiple benefit evaluation shows promise as an aid to facilitate partnership working towards implementation of multi-functional sustainable drainage systems and blue–green infrastructure.
Highlights
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and ‘blue–green’ infrastructure (BGI) are gaining momentum in the UK as alternatives to traditional piped drainage systems to manage surface water and flood risk
BGI and SuDS can provide a range of ecosystem services, including regulating services, supporting services, cultural services and, to a lesser extent, provisioning services (UKNEA, 2011)
This paper has demonstrated how two complimentary tools – CIRIA’s Benefits of SuDS Tool (BeST) (CIRIA, 2015) and the blue–green cities multiple benefit geographic information system (GIS) toolbox (BGC, 2016) – may be used in collaboration to evaluate the multiple benefits of BGI or SuDS projects
Summary
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and ‘blue–green’ infrastructure (BGI) are gaining momentum in the UK as alternatives to traditional piped drainage systems to manage surface water and flood risk. While many multiple benefits have been reported in the literature (Ashley et al, 2013; Ellis, 2013; Jose et al, 2015), they are often valued notionally and so difficult to include in funding proposals and implement widely (Ashley et al, 2015; O’Donnell et al, 2017; Thorne et al, 2015) To address this need, new tools and methodologies have been developed to evaluate BGI and SuDS, for example lifecycle assessment (Casal-Campos et al, 2015), geographic information system (GIS) evaluation (Hoang et al, 2016; Morgan and Fenner, 2017; Norton et al, 2015) and spreadsheet monetisation (CIRIA, 2015). Utilisation of these complementary tools for multiple benefit evaluation shows promise as an aid to facilitate partnership working towards implementation of multi-functional BGI, with potential application in the public and private sectors
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