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POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article

Front. Water
Sec. Water and Human Systems
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1370501
This article is part of the Research Topic Transition of Nature-based Solutions at the Science-policy-practice Interface View all 3 articles

Community-Centered Instrumentation and Monitoring of Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Stormwater Control

Provisionally accepted
Colleen O'Brien Colleen O'Brien 1Malcolm Mossman Malcolm Mossman 2Lucas Chamberlain Lucas Chamberlain 2Jennifer Jenkins Jennifer Jenkins 3John Watson John Watson 4Ryan Wilson Ryan Wilson 5Drew Williams-Clark Drew Williams-Clark 5Alec Singer Alec Singer 5Kara Riggio Kara Riggio 6Danielle Gallet Danielle Gallet 7William M. Miller William M. Miller 8Aaron I. Packman Aaron I. Packman 9*
  • 1 Northwestern University, Evanston, United States
  • 2 Delta Institute, Chicago, Illinois, United States
  • 3 The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Virginia, United States
  • 4 Forest Preserves of Cook County, River Forest, Illinois, United States
  • 5 Metropolitan Planning Council, Chicago, Illinois, United States
  • 6 OAI Inc, Chicago, Illinois, United States
  • 7 Independent researcher, Chicago, United States
  • 8 Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States
  • 9 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme precipitation events, requiring new ways of managing stormwater, particularly in urban areas. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have become increasingly popular to provide distributed stormwater storage while supporting urban biodiversity and access to nature. However, long-term monitoring of the hydrological performance of NBS is limited. To date most literature has focused on monitoring methodologies for specific sites and types of NBS, use of remote sensing and modeling for large-scale assessments, or measuring benefits of NBS for urban heat mitigation. More comprehensive and consistent measurement strategies are needed to understand the effects of distributed NBS on urban hydrology at the regional scale, and improve the design, maintenance, and adoption for community-centered stormwater management. To address these gaps, we review available literature on measurement methods, summarize these methods and provide specific recommendations for instrumentation and in situ monitoring of common types and scales of urban NBS. Based on our findings on performance monitoring for individual NBS sites, we extend recommendations for consistent hydrological assessment of distributed NBS at regional scale and the efficacy of NBS in reducing community flooding impacts. These recommendations are particularly applicable for municipalities, researchers and community-based organizations who are now leading the planning and implementation of community-centered NBS systems in many areas.

    Keywords: Stormwater management, green infrastructure, Monitoring, instrumentation, Flood reduction

    Received: 14 Jan 2024; Accepted: 17 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 O'Brien, Mossman, Chamberlain, Jenkins, Watson, Wilson, Williams-Clark, Singer, Riggio, Gallet, Miller and Packman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Aaron I. Packman, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.