Abstract
Green infrastructure (GI) contributes to improve urban drainage and also has other societal and environmental benefits that grey infrastructure usually does not have. Economic assessment for urban drainage planning and decision making often focuses on flood criteria. This study presents an economic assessment of GI based on a conventional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that includes several benefits related to urban drainage (floods, combined sewer overflows and waste water treatment), environmental impacts (receiving water bodies) and additional societal and environmental benefits associated with GI (air quality improvements, aesthetic values, etc.). Benefits from flood damage reduction are monetized based on the widely used concept of Expected Annual Damage (EAD) that was calculated using a 1D/2D urban drainage model together with design storms and a damage model based on tailored flood depth–damage curves. Benefits from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO) damage reduction were monetized using a 1D urban drainage model with continuous rainfall simulations and prices per cubic meter of spilled combined sewage water estimated from literature; other societal benefits were estimated using unit prices also estimated from literature. This economic assessment was applied to two different case studies: the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Badalona. The results are useful for decision making and also underline the relevancy of including not only flood damages in CBA of GI.
Highlights
Green infrastructure (GI)— recognized with the acronyms NBS (Nature-Based Solutions), SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems), LID (Low Impact Development), BMP (Best Management Practices), WSUD (Water Sensitive Urban Design) and many others [1]—contributes to improve urban stormwater management and has several other societal benefits like air quality improvements, reduction of heat island effects, aesthetic and recreational values, and others [2]
This study presents an economic assessment of GI based on a conventional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that includes several benefits related to urban drainage, environmental impacts and additional societal and environmental benefits associated with GI
Several studies have presented socio-economic assessments of different climate change adaptation options focusing on direct and indirect benefits derived from flood damage reduction capacity of GI
Summary
Green infrastructure (GI)— recognized with the acronyms NBS (Nature-Based Solutions), SUDS (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems), LID (Low Impact Development), BMP (Best Management Practices), WSUD (Water Sensitive Urban Design) and many others [1]—contributes to improve urban stormwater management and has several other societal benefits like air quality improvements, reduction of heat island effects, aesthetic and recreational values, and others [2]. Several studies have presented socio-economic assessments of different climate change adaptation options focusing on direct and indirect benefits derived from flood damage reduction capacity of GI. Velasco et al [4] presented a cost-benefit analysis where only direct benefits were included in terms of avoided flood damages obtained by different adaptation scenarios in Barcelona: structural measures (pipe enlargement and stormwater tanks), GI, flood barriers for ground floor doors of businesses and private buildings and early-warning systems. Zhou et al [3,5] presented a framework and its application to a Danish case study for economic assessment of different climate adaptation options focusing on flood impacts. The damage costs were calculated using unit costs reported from case-specific literature In these papers, flood adaptation options based on pipe enlargements were compared to stormwater infiltration through GI focusing on flood reduction benefits
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