Implementation Of Green Infrastructure Research Articles

Projected performance of green infrastructure strategies for flood mitigation in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta

Background: The Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) delta – the world’s most populous river delta – faces heightened susceptibility to the rise in flooding disasters due to climate change, impacting millions annually. Current flood management strategies are unsustainable and ineffective, and resilient flood management is needed. A promising alternative is the strategic implementation of green infrastructure (GI) applications, which have proven effective in flood management in other regions. Methods: An analysis of the region’s past and future vulnerability to flooding is conducted. Then, green infrastructure performance metrics from regions with similar climatic conditions are extrapolated for the GBM. Green roofs, permeable pavements, and rain gardens were identified as the most suitable GI types for the GBM. Finally, computer simulations were employed to analyze the performance of different implementations of GI within a model city. Results: The simulations showed that 0% green rooftop coverage, 100% permeable pavement coverage, and 40% rain garden coverage were the most feasible GI layout. This configuration resulted in the most preferable balance between cost effectiveness and reduced runoff. Green rooftops were minimized due to high installation costs relative to their retention capacity, whereas permeable pavements and rain garden coverage were maximized. Conclusions: The studies show GI’s potential for flood mitigation and resilience in the GBM region. GI initiatives align with the region's flood mitigation policies and are thus feasible to implement with aid from government incentives. Furthermore, the computer program developed for this analysis could serve as a valuable tool for assessing GI implementation limits and offering guidance to policymakers.

Scenario-Based Green Infrastructure Installations for Building Urban Stormwater Resilience—A Case Study of Fengxi New City, China

Global climate change has precipitated a surge in urban flooding challenges, prompting the imperative role of green infrastructure (GI) as the linchpin of sponge city construction to enhance urban sustainability and resilience. But the evaluation of urban stormwater resilience faces challenges due to the lack of a comprehensive evaluation framework taking the intrinsic features of the resilience system into account and the insufficient coverage of alternative scenarios’ performance under multiple rainfall return periods. This study, focusing on Fengxi New City, China, evaluates the suitability of GI (i.e., green roofs, rain gardens, and permeable pavements) and constructs a stormwater management model (SWMM) for urban stormwater hydrological simulation. This study also establishes a comprehensive urban stormwater resilience evaluation system and uses quantitative methods to unify the performances of scenarios under different rainfall return periods. Our analytical findings elucidate that the suitability of GI is predominantly concentrated in the northern and western areas of the study area, with the smallest suitable area observed for permeable pavements. Divergent GIs exhibit disparate performances, with rain gardens emerging as particularly efficacious. Importantly, the combination of multiple GIs yields a synergistic enhancement in resilience, underscoring the strategic advantage of adopting a diverse and integrated approach to GI implementation. This study facilitates a deeper understanding of urban stormwater resilience and assists in informed planning decisions for GI and sponge cities.

Barriers to resident participation in tree-planting initiatives across a metropolitan area

Past research on barriers to the development and implementation of green infrastructure (GI) has examined the experiences of policy makers and community leaders, with a focus on planting or installing GI. However, many of these programs rely on participation from the public — especially residents — who often steward GI over the long-term on both public and private lands. To better understand the barriers experienced by primary stewards of GI, we conducted 93 intercept interviews with residents spanning four neighborhoods in the City of Philadelphia and in four nearby suburban municipalities with active TPIs. Selected neighborhoods and towns included areas with varied canopy cover and economically and racially diverse communities. We found that residents viewed trees as a neighborhood asset, yet they also identified multiple categories of barriers across the tree lifecycle, including physical, maintenance, aesthetic, knowledge, and environmental issues. Our study also reveals the convergence and divergence of barriers experienced across city and suburban neighborhoods based on contextual factors. Our results suggest that barriers to participation in TPIs are multi-dimensional, context-specific, and endure across the lifecycle of GI. Long-term maintenance concerns relate to tree care that is outside the purview of TPIs led by non-profit organizations. Advancing equitable urban forestry that reaches neighborhoods with the greatest need requires recognition and respect of resident and community experiences, needs, and land use priorities, as well as improved institutional collaboration.

Impact of single and combined local air pollution mitigation measures in an urban environment

Urban air pollution is one of the most important environmental problems for human health and several strategies have been developed for its mitigation. The objective of this study is to assess the impact of single and combined mitigation measures on concentrations of air pollutants emitted by traffic at pedestrian level in the same urban environment. The effectiveness of different scenarios of green infrastructure (GI), the implementation of photocatalytic materials and traffic low emission zones (LEZ) are investigated, as well as several combinations of LEZ and GI. A wide set of scenarios is simulated through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling for two different wind directions (perpendicular (0°) and 45° wind directions). Wind flow for the BASE scenario without any measure implemented was previously evaluated using wind-tunnel measurements. Air pollutant concentrations for this scenario are compared with the results obtained from the different mitigation scenarios. Reduction of traffic emissions through LEZ is found to be the most effective single measure to improve local air quality. However, GI enhances the effects of LEZ, which makes the combination of LEZ + GI a very effective measure. The effectiveness of this combination depends on the GI layout, the intensity of emission reduction in the LEZ and the traffic diversion in streets surrounding the LEZ. These findings, in line with previous literature, suggest that the implementation of GI may increase air pollutant concentrations at pedestrian level for some cases. However, this study highlights that this negative effect on air quality can turn into positive when used in combination with reductions of local traffic emissions.

Addressing Local Water Security through Green Infrastructure Implementation: A Review of Urban Plans in Monterrey, Mexico, and Brussels, Belgium

Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly linked to urban water management and can contribute to achieving water security in communities. This research uses a variation-finding comparative approach to recognize how far GI solutions are currently used to address water security in the urban developments of Monterrey City, Mexico, and Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. A comparative content analysis of seven related urban development/sectoral plans is conducted using ATLAS.ti 9 software. The results depict the overall distribution of GI implementations, their typologies and spatial scales, water-security aspects that are addressed by GI, and the related definitions in the plans. In general, our analysis does not present a promising situation for the Monterrey case, although it reveals that policymakers have started to use GI in urban plans to address water security. Considering Brussels’ conditions, although GI solutions are much more frequent and advanced than in Monterrey plans, the region cannot be considered a frontrunner of GI policies. Comparing these two remarkably diverse areas is beneficial to illuminate universal aspects of planning, as the method provides an opportunity to gain insight from a multi-city perspective, whether developed or developing, showing the potential areas to advance urban policies.

The use of green infrastructure and irrigation in the mitigation of urban heat in a desert city

Severe urban heat, a prevalent climate change consequence, endangers city residents globally. Vegetation-based mitigation strategies are commonly employed to address this issue. However, the Middle East and North Africa are under investigated in terms of heat mitigation, despite being one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change. This study assesses the feasibility and climatic implications of wide-scale implementation of green infrastructure (GI) for heat mitigation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia—a representative desert city characterized by low vegetation coverage, severe summer heat, and drought. Weather research forecasting model (WRF) is used to simulate GI cooling measures in Riyadh’s summer condition, including measures of increasing vegetation coverage up to 60%, considering irrigation and vegetation types (tall/short). In Riyadh, without irrigation, increasing GI fails to cool the city and can even lead to warming (0.1 to 0.3 °C). Despite irrigation, Riyadh’s overall GI cooling effect is 50% lower than GI cooling expectations based on literature meta-analyses, in terms of average peak hour temperature reduction. The study highlights that increased irrigation substantially raises the rate of direct soil evaporation, reducing the proportion of irrigation water used for transpiration and thus diminishing efficiency. Concurrently, water resource management must be tailored to these specific considerations.

Design urban climate-resilience with Nature-Based Solutions and Green Infrastructures. Challenges, issues, and best practices for neighborhood-scale regeneration

Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to urban environments, mostly affecting already vulnerable communities and ecosystems. While Climate Action (13th Sustainable Development Goal) still tends to focus on economic shifts and technological fixes, urban design and planning can play a crucial role in climate adaptation processes, enhancing socio-ecological resilience, while improving inclusivity, livability, wellbeing for all, opening to sustainable development scenarios. By focusing on nature-based solutions (NBS) and green infrastructure (GI), the contribution, which is part of an ongoing research, aims at identifying issues, challenges, and best practices to operationalize climate resilient adaptation through urban nature design and planning process and actions for neighborhood scale’s regeneration. Through a qualitative methodology, three neighborhood case studies, recognized as best practices, will be compared in order to understand, issue and procedures related to the implementation of climate NBS and GI inside urban regeneration design and planning process.eworks towards equitable and livable urban futures.

Leveraging the No Net Land Take Policy through Ecological Connectivity Analysis: The Role of Industrial Platforms in Flanders, Belgium

Land take for urbanisation has become a significant problem in many parts of the world due to environmental, social and economic impacts associated with the rapid depletion of blue and green spaces. In Europe, literature reveals a massive loss of ecosystems due to land take. The European Union has formulated a “No Net Land Take Policy” to stop new development activities on the available urban lands by 2050 within its member countries. In this paper, we highlight opportunities for mainstreaming green infrastructure planning in the industrial areas located in Flanders, Belgium, to enhance ecological connectivity towards the No Net Land Take Policy. The ecological connectivity was analysed using a blended methodology combining spatial analysis at the scale of the entire region and that of sixteen sub catchments within using the Patch-Corridor-Matrix model. A multifunctionality framework for assessing green infrastructure implementation was designed based on an analysis of the scientific literature discussing the ecological benefits of green infrastructure networks within industrial platforms. Our results show that industrial platforms might provide a broad spectrum of implementation opportunities reflecting the multi-functionality of green infrastructure networks while highlighting to what extent the underdeveloped areas laying within the boundary of industrial platforms are suitable for green infrastructure expansion.

Identification of Potential Land Locations for Green Open Space in Cirebon City Center (Case study: Pekalipan, Kesambi, and Kejaksan Districts)

Society cannot ignore the rapid growth of Cirebon city, as evidenced by the population growth rate, which has increased by 2.91% per year compared to the surrounding area. This growth is expected to lead to an increase in built-up land and a reduction in green open spaces in Cirebon City, amounting to approximately 10.5%. This decline green space can increase urban temperatures, especially in Cirebon City. This study focuses on identifying potential locations for green open space from the macro scale of Cirebon City to the microscale in the city center. The analysis reveals a rise in temperature in the city center, with temperatures generally decreasing from the center to the periphery. Surface temperatures have shown an increase from 2015 to 2021, rising from 30.64°C in 2015 to 32.65°C in 2021. The main objective of this study is to identify potential green open space locations in Cirebon City Center. This research employs a quantitative, descriptive, and spatial approach, involving data collection through field observations and literature studies. The research methodology includes the utilization of remote sensing technology to process Landsat 8 images, which aids in the identification of potential green open space locations. The study results indicate that there is an area of 8.02 hectares, or 1.16%, that aligns with the Regional Detail Spatial Plan (RDTR) but necessitates efforts to enhance the quality of green open spaces through methods such as design, management, and community participation. Additionally, there is an area covering 681.42 hectares, not covered by the RDTR, which is a priority for greening through the implementation of green infrastructure.

An Assessing Existence of Legal Infrastructure That Supports the Development of Green Investment Indonesia

In this paper, we describe green infrastructure as no longer a foreign concept in spatial and regional planning. The concept has become an integral part of the increasing demand for land for urban development, and the need for green open space to balance the development. This has led many countries to start implementing green infrastructure as part of the urban development "trend". The various applications are summarized in this book, with a focus on the United States, the United Kingdom, case studies of several countries in the European Union, and Singapore. The book also includes a chronological sequence of laws and regulations that support the implementation of green infrastructure in these countries, so as to illustrate how the implementation of green infrastructure requires a process to realize a strong legislative basis. Keywords: Legal Infrastructure, Green Investment, Economic Development

Persistent Social Vulnerability in Washington D.C. Communities and Green Infrastructure Clustering

Cities worldwide are presently contending with the intricate task of formulating urban infrastructure that seamlessly blends sustainability and resilience to effectively tackle urgent challenges. An increasingly prominent strategy gaining swift traction is the deployment of green infrastructure (GI), heralding a multitude of advantages for the urban milieu. As a growing body of research highlights the emergence of a new equity issue in our infrastructures from the perspective of environmental justice, it becomes evident that there is a significant gap in comprehensive studies investigating the combined temporal and spatial evolution of green infrastructure (GI) distribution. This research aims to address this gap by adopting a novel approach that explicitly considers the temporal dimension of GI distribution. Unlike previous studies that often rely on cross-sectional snapshots, this study employs a panel data analysis, which allows for a comprehensive examination of how GI distribution evolves over time. The primary research question addressed in this study is whether GI distribution in Washington D.C. exhibits a propensity to concentrate within certain communities. This inquiry delves into the pressing concern of the potential exacerbation of existing disparities through GI implementation. The study’s findings may drive evidence-based policy recommendations that foster equitable distribution strategies, guaranteeing that socially vulnerable communities reap the rewards of GI’s positive impacts.

Evaluation of an Incentive Programme for Increasing Green Infrastructure on Vineyards

Wine grape ecosystems with low species richness and reliance on agrichemicals have weak resilience to environmental impacts. Increasing biodiversity through green infrastructure (GI) not only helps mitigate some of these impacts but can provide additional benefits to growers and the public. Despite this, many vineyards have limited GI. While scholars suggest incentive programmes may help to encourage GI implementation, few studies have evaluated their effectiveness. We surveyed winegrowers and their vineyards in the Waipara Valley sub-region, New Zealand, to evaluate an incentive programme aimed at increasing GI on vineyards, particularly indigenous vegetation. The results indicated the programme was effective in encouraging growers to plant indigenous plants in areas incapable or unsuitable for growing grapes, largely in support of nature conservation, aesthetics, branding, and sales. It was less successful in encouraging growers to plant them in productive areas. While substantial GI, primarily in the form of inter-row cover crops, was managed in these areas, most were exotic plants seen by growers to provide superior services (especially erosion control, weed suppression and pest regulation) at lower management complexity and cost. Growers identified six GI enablers: (1) promoting GI types that provide greater grower services than disservices and costs of implementation and management; (2) implementing GI where biophysical conditions support success; (3) providing assistance with plant selection and design; (4) providing GI implementation and/or management funding; (5) developing GI certification policies and regional association programmes; and (6) providing government GI regulations, strategies, and incentives. They also identified five barriers: (1) insufficient grower appreciation for indigenous GI services; (2) grower concerns that some GI disservices were greater than their services; (3) grower belief that costs of GI implementation and/or management were greater than those of alternative practices; (4) harsh and remote GI growing conditions; (5) lack of grower knowledge regarding how to design plantings, especially those that could provide multiple services; and (6) lack of sufficient financial resources for GI implementation and/or management. Twenty recommendations for improving GI implementation are provided.

Exploring Public Preference and Willingness to Pay for the Ecosystem Benefits of Urban Green Infrastructure: Evidence from a Discrete Choice Experiment of Pilot Sponge Cities in China

Global extreme weather events such as rainstorms, floods and droughts have become increasingly frequent, posing significant threats to human beings worldwide. Green infrastructure has been implemented for decades to mitigate these issues. However, its widespread adoption in cities is still limited. A lack of sustainable funds was viewed as a great challenge for its widespread implementation. Many developed countries have practiced public participation and stormwater fee systems to mitigate these challenges. To assess the value that citizens place on the ecosystem benefits provided by urban green infrastructure is of great importance for increasing public participation and their willingness to pay. Thus, this paper aims to explore public preferences and their willingness to pay for the benefits of green infrastructure to support the construction and maintenance costs. A discrete choice experiment method was employed and five attributes were selected: reduction in run-off pollutant, degrees of ponding, plant type, planting aesthetics and the amount of payment. The Ngene1.2 software was used to generate a questionnaire, and data collected from the case cities, Xianyang and Xi’xian New Area, China, were analyzed using the mixed logit model. The results revealed that in Xianyang, the willingness to pay was not significantly associated with cognition, while in Xi’xian New Area, willingness to pay was positively related to cognition. Respondents exhibited a significant willingness to pay for green infrastructure to achieve reduced degrees of ponding in both cities, as well as improving planting aesthetics in Xi’xian New Area. Based on these findings, we conclude that government decision-makers should prioritize disseminating knowledge about green infrastructure to residents before implementing such projects in communities. The findings provide valuable insights into the potential economic value of urban green infrastructure and can guide policymakers and urban planners in making decisions regarding the design, implementation, and management of green infrastructure. This study contributes to the understanding of citizen perspectives and the economic evaluation of ecosystem services provided by urban green infrastructure.

Analyzing the validity of load capability curve: how economic complexity, renewable energy, R&D, and communication technologies take their part in G-20 countries.

Intense anthropogenic contamination of the air, water, and soil inspires scholars to examine the causes of pollution and provide remedies to assure environmental sustainability. Therefore, researchers in this study are driven to investigate the causes of the severe air, water, and soil contamination that has resulted from human activity and to offer recommendations for achieving environmental sustainability. This research contributes to the ecological works by suggesting the load capability curve (LCH) hypothesis and using the load capacity factor (LC) to investigate components influencing climatic quality. The LC enables thorough climatic value examination when comparing ecological footprint and biocapacity. Information and communication technologies (INF), development and research (R&D), renewable energy (RE) usage, and disposable income are all examined, considering their effects on the load capacity factor. This analysis utilizes the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag estimator and the Westerlund cointegration on data for the G-20 countries from 1995 to 2018. Empirical evidence suggests that renewables, R&D spending, economic complexity, and INF all benefit environmental quality. This study cannot support the LCH hypothesis, which states that increasing income worsens ecological conditions up to a certain point but then aids in improving environmental quality afterward. Based on the findings, G-20 governments should prioritize environmental policies that boost economic growth, spread renewable energy, prioritize research and development spending, and assist the implementation of green INF infrastructure.

Resilience Assessment in Urban Water Infrastructure: A Critical Review of Approaches, Strategies and Applications

Urban water infrastructure (UWI) comprises the main systems, including water supply systems (WSS), urban drainage/stormwater systems (UDS) and wastewater systems (WWS). The UWI needs to be resilient to a wide range of shocks and stresses, including structural failures such as pipe breakage and pump breakdown and functional failures such as unmet water demand/quality, flooding and combined sewer overflows. However, there is no general consensus about the resilience assessment of these systems widely presented by various research works. This study aims to critically review the approaches, strategies and applications of the resilience assessment for the complex systems in UWI. This review includes examining bibliometric analysis, developed frameworks related to resilience assessment to help comprehend resilience concepts for the specified UWI systems in urban settings, strategies for improving resilience, resilience indicators and common tools used for modelling resilience assessment in UWI. The results indicate that resilience assessment has primarily been conducted in developed countries, underscoring the macroeconomic significance of UWI. Three key areas have been identified for analysing resilience in UWI: system design, development of resilience concepts and implementation of green infrastructure. Moreover, it has been discovered that although resilience is commonly defined using technical approaches, a more comprehensive understanding of resilience can be gained through a holistic approach. Furthermore, while strategies such as system upgrades, decentralisation, digitalisation and nature-based solutions can enhance UWI resilience, they may be insufficient to fulfil all resilience indicators. To address the challenge of effectively comparing different resilience options, it is crucial to extensively examine comprehensive and sustainability-based indicators in future research.

Simulation and Comprehensive Evaluation of the Multidimensional Environmental Benefits of Sponge Cities

The implementation of grey and green infrastructure is an effective means to address urban flooding and nonpoint source pollution, but due to the complexity of the process and the diversity of benefits, there is a lack of measurement of the comprehensive benefits. Adopting a typical university in Beijing as an example, this paper simulated the multidimensional benefits of the water quantity, water quality, and ecology of grey and green facility renovation by coupling the storm water management model (SWMM) and InfoWorks Integrated Catchment Management (ICM). Monetization methods and economical means were employed to characterize the comprehensive benefits. The results showed that grey and green infrastructure retrofitting reduced the number of severe overflow nodes in the study area by 54.35%, the total overflow volume by 22.17%, and the nonpoint source pollution level by approximately 80% under the heavy rain scenario and 60% under the rainstorm scenario. The annual benefits of grey and green infrastructure renovation reached CNY764,691/year: of this amount, CNY275,726/year was from hydrological regulation, CNY270,895/year was from nonpoint source pollution reduction, and CNY218,070/year was from ecological improvement. The benefits of green facilities were higher than those of grey facilities, and the combined benefits were negatively correlated with the rainfall level, with a total benefit–cost ratio of 1.19. The results provide methodological and data support for grey and green infrastructure retrofitting within the context of sponge cities.

Ethical leadership and environmental performance: The role of green IT capital, green technology innovation, and technological orientation

Drawing upon the resource-based perspective, we develop and test a serial mediation model of CEO ethical leadership and environmental performance. Specifically, we propose that ethical leadership enhance environmental performance and this link is explained by green IT capital and green technology innovation, with a particular focus on the moderating role of firm technological orientation. The hypothesized relationships were tested in structural equation modeling with survey data from 303 Saudi small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results illustrate that the indirect effect of CEO ethical leadership on environmental performance is serially mediated by green IT capital and green technology innovation. The results also show that firm technological orientation moderates the relationship between CEO ethical leadership and green IT capital. This study offers practical insights and suggests that SMEs leadership focus on the creation and implementation of green infrastructure for successful implementation of green practices that can contribute to improved environmental performance.

Professional differences in green infrastructure implementation: A case study of integrating engineering and ecological knowledge systems in the water sector

As water organizations adopt green infrastructure for stormwater management to increase sustainability, new types of professionals are needed that were not previously widespread in the industry. Ecologists and other ecologically-oriented employees are being brought into these organizations that have long been mostly oriented around an engineering knowledge system. This study examines how these two different knowledge systems interact within a water organization, outlining the differences in their underlying assumptions and orientations that can cause friction. The research used a case study approach to examine implementation of asset management within a water organization that has been building and managing green infrastructure for over thirty years. It found that integration around a common decision process can occur, but that it is a slow process filled with continuous negotiation. The research suggests that water organizations looking to establish green infrastructure programs should be more aware and intentional about discussing differences in professional knowledge systems when bringing new types of professions into an established organization.

The impact of stormwater management strategies on the flow regime of a peri-urban catchment facing urbanisation and climate change: a distributed modelling study in Lyon, France

ABSTRACT The relative impact of urbanisation (urban sprawl), climate change (rainfall and evapotranspiration) and stormwater disconnection strategies (implementation of green infrastructure (GI)) on a peri-urban stream in the western suburbs of Lyon, France, was investigated using a distributed, physically based model (J2000P). Results showed that ambitious catchment-scale implementation of GI has the potential to mitigate some hydrological effects of urbanisation, especially a drastic reduction of combined sewer overflows. However, GI did not have a large impact on the stream flow regime, especially in the context of climate change, as the stream is dominated by non-urban contributions. Spatially distributed models have the capacity to inform river managers about the extent of implementation of GI needed to achieve given management goals and highlight some limitations of disconnection strategies. Indeed, while GI improved the resilience of sewer networks to global change, it was not sufficient to compensate for the effects of climate change on streamflow.

An Evaluation of Local Comprehensive Plans Regarding Green Infrastructure in 52 Cities across the U.S. Gulf Coast Region

The utilization of green infrastructure (GI) showed promising results as a flood mitigation strategy and a viable solution for building community resilience and achieving sustainability, especially in light of the challenges posed by climate change and increasing climate-related hazards. Meanwhile, it remains uncertain how local governments incorporated the key principles of GI into their planning and regulatory frameworks, particularly their comprehensive plans. This study aimed to fill in the gaps by evaluating U.S. Gulf Coast cities’ comprehensive plans regarding GI. Using the content analysis method, a sample of fifty-two city comprehensive plans was evaluated to determine how well local plans support GI and to examine the factors which influence the quality of local plans. Our results indicate that the sampled cities in the Gulf Coast region are likely to have low willingness to plan and implement GI. Moreover, results from statistical analysis implied that the sampled Gulf Coast cities are more likely to produce higher-quality plans in terms of GI when there are more opportunities for public participation and involvement in the planning process. Findings from our study can provide valuable information and direction for local authorities and planners to improve the performance of their comprehensive plans and support GI implementation in the future.