Green infrastructure (GI) development, as part of the stormwater management system, is one of the major approaches to improve social and ecological resilience of cities. Climate change poses different threats to cities such as shifts in precipitation patterns, increased flood and drought risks, and more severe heat waves during summer. City managers are looking into GI to improve community resiliency to the effects of climate change by reducing flooding, combating urban heat islands, increasing water supplies and improving water quality. Although GI networks are thought to increase resilience in cities, we argue that GI itself needs to be resilient to be able serve this function. Thus, developing a framework to assess and identify the indicators to improve the resilience of urban GI is essential. We have started this framework building off examples in the literature, beginning by selecting potential indicators that can be used for evaluating GI. To build a holistic evaluation tool, we defined essential categories including policy plans and strategies, system design and planning, maintenance, economic factors, and social factors. We collaborate with stakeholders via focus group to refine the assessment tool we outlined. Finally, we related each indicator to the resilience concept it represented.
Results/Conclusions
The outcome of this research is a co-produced resilience assessment tool developed with stakeholders including managers, designers, planners, and GI inspectors in Anacostia watershed. The results show that having a defined policy, connection between sectors, periodically editing and evaluating the policies, and building connections between long term and short-term strategies are among the essential indicators in policy and planning. For GI design, selection of the right feature type based on the location and climate of the region, considering biodiversity, redundancy and flexibility are critical. Having a maintenance plan and regularly checking GI for possible cause of failures including line blockage, sediment and pollution loading, and soil compaction are significant. Economic and social factors such as city budget allocation for planning, design, and maintenance, and incentive plans for residents, as well as considering the demand of society for GI development are critical factors needs to be considered to have a resilient GI. Stakeholders’ experience in the field is important for the practicality and uptake of the tool. Developing such assessment tools helps decision makers to determine how resilient GI is, and ultimately help managers to allocate strategies to increase the resilience of GI.