Resilient Green Infrastructure Asset Management

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This proposed research program will focus on resilient green infrastructure asset management. The work is related to the technical standard CAN/CSA-ISO 37120 (2015), which focuses on a framework for sustainable community planning. From applications in the proposed research program's first focus area of an individual residence (e.g., rainwater harvesting; micro-solar), and the second focus area of a community block and/or neighbourhood (e.g. community gardens; street trees), the need for consideration of resiliency and sustainability principles has never been more pressing due to the multi-hazard systemic risks (e.g. wind, flood, fire and oil spill events) that are increasingly and currently being faced by Canadian municipalities. During the planning, design and maintenance phases for green infrastructure, a wide range of options must be considered to select the most robust and resilient alternative. This proposed research program will develop a suite of decision support system tools, to aid design professionals and decision-makers responsible for green infrastructure asset management. These prototype tools will be modular, easily updatable, and have effective graphical user interfaces to make decisions on the selection of alternatives to maximize sustainability benefits and resiliency achievement for Canadian municipalities. The proposed research will facilitate the training of three PhD and two MASc graduate students. The proposed research is both original and innovative, in terms of the application areas studied and the synthesis of interdisciplinary inputs to create effective asset management tools. The work will be applicable across a range of spatial scales, and the related tools will be modifiable to adjust to future conditions to assess resiliency under a range of multiple hazards. The developed tools will incorporate Cloud-based storage for management of necessary data obtained by state-of-the-art data collection approaches, integrate emerging modelling approaches such as Agent-based simulation modelling, and have effective visualization interfaces for exploring the most impactful and resilient solutions by design professionals and relevant decision-makers. Canadian municipalities will face significant challenges in the planning and design of private residential and municipal green infrastructure assets to become increasingly resilient to future risks from multiple hazards and overarching climate change effects. The proposed research integrates strongly with current Canadian and global efforts to operationalize the CAN/CSA-ISO 37120 standard on measuring the degree of sustainability achievement in municipalities, by providing practical methodologies and tools to develop and improve green infrastructure assets and directly achieve higher resilience metrics over time.