A “crowd-sourced” design framework will be developed to enable stakeholders to interactively create and evaluate potential GI designs that reflect consideration of the full breadth of social, economic, and environmental criteria. The following specific research tasks will be undertaken: (1) create integrated models to predict hydrologic, human, and ecosystem impacts of green infra-structure designs from site to catchment scales (Research Questions 1 and 2); (2) develop interactive methods for crowd-sourcing green infrastructure design (Research Question 3); and (3) implement modeling and crowd-sourced design methods in a cyberinfrastructure (CI) framework (Research Question 4).
The research questions will be evaluated in diverse neighborhoods within three urban catchments in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, which have extensive existing data on pretreatment stormwater and nutrient conditions, and planned or ongoing GI implementation. These data will be used to calibrate and validate the hydrologic and ecosystem models. Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Baltimore will provide access and interface with communities that are currently implementing GI. Their input will be used to evaluate and improve predictions of human GI preferences, the efficacy of the crowd-sourced design framework, and improvements in stakeholder engagement in GI design through interactive CI.
National Science Foundation – CyberSEES: A Framework for Crowd-Sourced Green Infrastructure Design (CCF-1331807), 2013-2016
Barbara Minsker (PI)
Jong Lee (Co-PI)
Kenton McHenry (Co-PI)