Making B£ST better: taking the blue-green infrastructure Benefits EStimation Tool online

蓝色和绿色基础设施（BGI）必须融入我们的城镇，使社区能够适应气候变化的影响，并提供对极端天气的抵御能力。BGI提供了一系列的多重效益，包括：改善健康和福祉，降低洪水风险;改善空气和水质;自然冷却;增强生物多样性和碳固存。与任何基础设施项目一样，决策者需要了解所涉及的成本和收益，以决定何时投入所需的时间和资金来实施BGI。华大基因的许多好处可能难以用货币来量化（例如舒适价值、生物多样性），而且是不熟悉的项目，不适合添加到为更传统的基础设施项目设计的资产负债表中。效益估计工具（B£ST）被供水和污水处理公司、地方当局、环境监管机构、洪水风险管理人员、开发商、社区、环境机构、城市设计师、工程师和土地使用管理人员，以有力地评估和货币化华大基因的许多财务，社会和环境效益。凭借强大的证据，B£ST的分析结果使用户能够了解，量化和货币化华大基因的更广泛的价值。这可以支持投资决策，帮助确定利益相关者，以加强讨论，并为新的发展和城市再生项目寻找潜在的合作融资途径。当前版本的B£ST是电子表格格式，可以免费下载和使用。拟议的项目是将B£ST及其有限数量的关键优势转化为在线应用程序和空间格式。长期目标是增加评价的好处，提高该工具的可用性和功能，并以与目标受众已在使用的其他规划和决策工具相同或类似的格式提供该工具。迁移到在线应用程序将从B£ST的开发中汲取技术学习、知识和用户反馈，并将其应用到新的、易于访问和用户友好的格式中。B£ST的基本版本将保持免费使用。该应用程序的许可版本将随后开发，可供不同类型的高级用户购买。这将为访问数据集和定期更新在线B£ST提供资金，以保持其稳健性和可靠性。该愿景是一个用户友好的在线应用程序，通过展示其多重优势带来的货币化价值来支持BGI的实施。

It is essential that blue and green infrastructure (BGI) is integrated into our towns and cities to enable communities to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to provide resilience to extreme weather. BGI provides an array of multiple benefits that include: improved health and well-being, reduced flood risk; improved air and water quality; natural cooling; enhanced biodiversity and carbon sequestration.As with any infrastructure project, decision makers need to understand the costs and benefits involved to decide when to invest the time and money required to implement BGI. Many benefits of BGI can be difficult to quantify in monetary terms (e.g. amenity value, biodiversity) and are unfamiliar items to add to balance sheets designed for more traditional infrastructure projects.The Benefits Estimation Tool (B£ST) is used by water and sewerage companies, local authorities, environmental regulators, flood risk managers, developers, communities, environmental bodies, urban designers, engineers and land use managers to robustly assess and monetise many of the financial, social and environmental benefits of BGI.Drawing on robust evidence, the results of B£ST's analyses enable users to understand, quantify and monetise the wider value of BGI. This can support investment decisions, help identify stakeholders to enhance discussions and source potential collaborative funding routes for new development and urban regeneration projects.The current version of B£ST is in spreadsheet format and is free to download and use. The project proposed is to translate B£ST and a limited number of its key benefits to an online application and a spatial format. The long-term aim is to include more benefits for evaluation, enhance the tool's usability and functionality, and to provide it in the same or similar format as other planning and decision making tools already in use by the target audience.B£ST in its existing format has been in use for some four years, with over 3,000 downloads. Moving to an online application will take the technical learning, knowledge and user feedback from development of B£ST and apply it to a new, easily accessible and user-friendly format.The basic version of B£ST will remain free to use. Licensed versions of the application will be subsequently developed which will be available for purchase by different types of advanced user. This will fund access to data sets and regular updates to online B£ST which will retain its robustness and reliability.The vision is a user-friendly, online application which supports the implementation of BGI by demonstrating the monetised value that its multiple benefits bring.