A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Green Infrastructure in Mitigating Pollutant Transferal and Flood Events in Sunnyside, Houston, TX
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Sustainability
Abstract
There is a growing and critical need to develop solutions for communities that are at particular risk of the impacts of the nexus of hazardous substances and natural disasters. In urban areas at high risk for flooding and lacking proper land-use controls, communities are vulnerable to environmental contamination from industrial land uses during flood events. This research uniquely applied a series of landscape pzerformance models to evaluate such associations including (1) the Green Values National Stormwater Calculator, (2) the Value of Green Infrastructure Tool, and (3) the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment Model. This paper presents a framework for combining landscape performance models, which are often only individually applied, to evaluate green infrastructure impacts on flood mitigation and pollutant transfer during flooding events using the Sunnyside neighborhood in Houston, Texas, USA, as a case site. The results showed that the plan reduced the risk of flooding, decreased stormwater runoff contaminants, and provided a possible direction to protect vulnerable communities.
Description
This article was originally published in Sustainability. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074247
Keywords
landscape performance, green infrastructure, stormwater, resilience, equity
Citation
Newman, Galen, Garett T. Sansom, Siyu Yu, Katie R. Kirsch, Dongying Li, Youjung Kim, Jennifer A. Horney, Gunwoo Kim, and Saima Musharrat. 2022. "A Framework for Evaluating the Effects of Green Infrastructure in Mitigating Pollutant Transferal and Flood Events in Sunnyside, Houston, TX" Sustainability 14, no. 7: 4247. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14074247