https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6935-1832
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ABSTRACT
Urbanization can negatively affect residents’ health and wellbeing. Green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) is increasingly advocated as a win-win strategy for addressing multiple urban problems. Literature quantifying GSI benefits is growing, but it is unclear how it performs in arid and semi-arid cities. This study, co-designed with practitioner partners in Phoenix, Arizona, evaluates the current state of knowledge on GSI performance with respect to hydrologic, water quality, urban heat, and air quality benefits. Our systematic literature review confirms a lack of research quantifying GSI performance in arid and semi-arid cities. Our findings, which we summarize in the paper and present in a searchable, online database, suggest that GSI is beneficial in mitigating runoff, urban heat, and air pollution in the surrounding area to some degree. Results for water quality are more mixed. This points to the need for more GSI monitoring and research, especially of air and water quality benefits.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported through a fellowship from the Arizona State University Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, supported by Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. Piper Trust supports organizations that enrich health, well-being, and opportunity for the people of Maricopa County, Arizona. The conclusions, views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust.
The authors would like to thank the entire Phoenix LID project team for their help in scoping the review and identifying studies, including Deborah Tosline, Maggie Messerschmidt, Tricia Balluff, Ira Domsky, Harry Cooper, Lisa McCauley, Linda Polumbo, Hilary Hartline, Anna Bettis, and Lindsay Bearup.
Disclosure statement
The authors have no conflict of interest.
Data Availability Statement
A spreadsheet with three sheets containing: (1) the coded performance values from reviewed studies; (2) the codebook; (3) the full literature list is available online:
Meerow, Sara; Natarajan, Mukunth; Krantz, David, 2020, ‘Supplementary material for green infrastructure performance in arid and semi-arid urban environments’, 10.7910/DVN/KOF8R4, Harvard Dataverse.