ABSTRACT

As urban flooding becomes more severe and frequent, communities are increasingly promoting the adoption of distributed green infrastructure (GI) to manage stormwater, such as rain barrels, rain gardens, and green roofs. However, the effects of distributed GI on the entire stormwater management system, or the factors that influence those effects, are unclear. The overarching goal of this CAREER project is to better understand decentralized sustainable stormwater management using a framework that combines an Internet of Things (IoT)-based green infrastructure (GI) network and a computational model, called the coupled agent-based model-StormWater Management Model (ABM-SWMM). The IoT-based GI network will allow data such as field measurements, timing, and frequency of GI maintenance to be collected in real-time. The coupled ABM-SWMM model will quantify effects on potential flood mitigation under various scenarios of GI installation and maintenance, policy, economic, and climate. The combination of these two approaches is designed to make it possible to identify and analyze technical, social, economic and policy barriers to acceptance and effective implementation of GI at multiple community scales, and to explore potential solutions to overcome them.

This project builds on the principal investigator's previous experience in ABM coupled with process-based hydrological models, shared vision planning with practitioners, and online platforms for stakeholder engagement. The project is organized around four objectives: 1) Analyze barriers that underlie local property owners' acceptance or rejection of GI via a social survey, providing behavioral data for the ABM, 2) Assess the effect of information sharing, via smart home devices and the IoT-based GI network, on property owners' diligence in maintaining their GIs, 3) Evaluate the runoff reduction effectiveness of decentralized GI implementation at multiple scales under various scenarios using coupled ABM-SWMM to provide technical and policy insights, and 4) Form an academic-public-private partnership to create a collaborative learning environment that allows students from middle school to graduate school to participate in collaborations among the university, local government, and private sectors. The human-cyberinfrastructure framework is targeted to advance the principal investigator's long-term career goal to understand complex interactions between humans and nature at different spatial scales, advance urban environmental sustainability through green infrastructure, and create a culture of learning for citizens of all ages about sustainable stormwater management.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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