Vulnerabilities of Green Stormwater Infrastructure Planning in Philadelphia, PA

Keywords: Green infrastructure, GI, GSI, Stormwater, Social Vulnerability, Infrastructure, Maintenance, Philadelphia
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 72

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) has emerged as a popular tool for flooding and stormwater mitigation. While cities across the United States implement GI into their planning processes, they are also deciding which communities receive these new installations and the co-benefits they offer. In the planning process, a pressing need is rising to include the equitable distribution of GI in addition to technical and engineering needs.
This study looks at the city of Philadelphia, a leader in GI implementation in the United States. It focuses on analyzing multiple aspects of vulnerability to local flooding impacts--social, environmental, infrastructural-- across the city to identify which communities have greater need for GI. We create citywide, multifaceted vulnerability indices accounting for the spatial distribution of social, built-environment, and maintenance vulnerabilities to flooding events at the scale of census block groups.
The results of this study reveal unequal distribution of social and built-environment vulnerabilities in the city. Potential areas of severe GI maintenance impacts appear to be concentrated in the downtown neighborhoods. These results indicate that some communities in Philadelphia are highly vulnerable in many of these perspectives and will need to be prioritized for GI implementation. In addition, the type of GI should be optimized to address the specific vulnerability impacts in different areas. It is our hope that the multifaceted vulnerability approach to planning will be applied in multiple areas of climate adaptation equity, with future studies continuing to update and add more dimensions of vulnerability if applicable.