What is the role of green stormwater infrastructure in managing extreme precipitation events?

ABSTRACT

Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is increasingly used to comply with stormwater management requirements under the Clean Water Act, but there is growing interest in leveraging GSI as part of climate change adaptation strategies. Success in contributing to this goal depends on what types of GSI are being used and how they are sized. Here we review GSI design storm requirements for the seven Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) cities in the United States. We find that while GSI in most of our study cities is designed for smaller, more common precipitation events (e.g., 1-year event) considered by current water quality regulations; GSI in several UREx cities is primarily focused on flood control and require design for much larger storms (e.g., 100-year events). In order for GSI to contribute to climate change adaptation, it is critical to ensure that design guidelines align with that goal.

KEYWORDS:

• Green infrastructure
• stormwater management
• design storms
• climate change adaptation
• flooding

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement Number 1444755, which supports the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). We are also appreciative of the stormwater management practitioners in our network cities for their assistance in finding and interpreting certain documents.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1444755].

Notes on contributors

Lauren E. McPhillips

Lauren E. McPhillips is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Agricultural & Biological Engineering at Penn State University. She holds a B.S. in Science of Earth Systems and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Biological & Environmental Engineering from Cornell University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network. Her research crosses between environmental science and engineering. This includes studying hydrologic and biogeochemical phenomena in the built environment. She has a particular focus on evaluating the hydrologic and biogeochemical function of existing green stormwater infrastructure as well as designing more effective configurations of green stormwater infrastructure.

Marissa Matsler

Marissa Matsler is an interdisciplinary scholar. Her research is focused on understanding the institutional and ecological challenges of green infrastructure development. Her work combines political ecology, science and technology studies (STS), urban ecology, and urban planning to examine the conflicts between green infrastructure as a conceptual greenspace planning tool and an engineering practice on-the-ground, in particular understanding the consequences of differing green infrastructure policies on marginalized communities and urban ecosystems. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She has a Ph.D. in Urban Studies from Portland State University, a Masters of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental, and a B.S. in Marine Biology from Oregon State University.

Bernice R. Rosenzweig

Bernice R. Rosenzweig is a Research Associate with the Environmental Sciences Initiative of the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She received a B.S. in Environmental Geology from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. Her research investigates the resilience of urban socio-eco-technical systems to extreme rain and tidal events. She is particularly interested in the impacts of cloudbursts on the function of urban sewer systems and blue-green infrastructure networks. As part of the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN), her current work focuses on coastal, post-industrial cities in the northeast United States.

Yeowon Kim

Yeowon Kim is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work explores infrastructure systems and institutional governance for urban areas, and is influenced by resilience thinking, sustainability, and civil engineering. She is a Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (urexsrn.net) and Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (natura-net.org). Her research interests include investigating how social, ecological, and technological systems are interacting with one another, focusing on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. She received her Ph.D. in Sustainability at ASU and her M.S. and B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Korea University in South Korea.